Hi

I'm not sure I completely accept Karl's argument here.  If by replication we 
mean same design and sample size, would our expectation of obtaining a 
significant result on the replication be no different for the original p values 
being .5, .3, .1, .05, .0001, ...?  I appreciate that the p value cannot be 
interpreted as the probability of replication, but it seems counter-intuitive 
to say that an effect that is not statistically significant (i.e., could have 
come from H0 distributions) is just as likely to replicate as an effect that is 
statistically significant (i.e., unlikely to have come from H0 distributions).  
If that were literally true, perhaps we should be replicating lots of studies 
that are not statistically significant (ESP anyone?).

Take care
Jim

James M. Clark
Professor & Chair of Psychology
[email protected]
Room 4L41A
204-786-9757
204-774-4134 Fax
Dept of Psychology, U of Winnipeg
515 Portage Ave, Winnipeg, MB
R3B 0R4  CANADA


>>> "Wuensch, Karl L" <[email protected]> 22-Apr-13 4:34 PM >>>
I absolutely abhor the term "statistically reliable," which implies that a 
replication attempt is likely to be successful.  Whether a replication attempt 
is likely to be successful is a function of the size of the effect, sample 
size, and control of extraneous variables, not of the value of p for prior 
research.

Cheers,

Karl L. Wuensch


-----Original Message-----
From: don allen [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Monday, April 22, 2013 5:28 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: Re: [tips] Polling...

Hi Marc-

Not only do I abhor the term "highly significant" I also dislike the term 
"significant". I always taught my students to use the term "statistically 
reliable" instead. "significant" implies that the results are important. That 
is a value judgement which should be made after careful consideration of a 
whole host of non-statistical factors. There was also a paper published a 
number of years ago (sorry, no reference and no access to the library right 
now) which showed that people ascribed more value to results which were labeled 
"significant" than those which were described as non-chance findings.

-Don.


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