I'm reading an interesting piece of research on anthropomorphism which
essentially states after a natural disaster if we use the term "mother nature"
when describing it, people will be less willing to contribute to relief efforts
("Humanizing nature could help the perceiver to conceive natural events as
imbued with intentionality and significance rather than considering them merely
random and meaningless phenomena"). They did two studies. Here's the
issue/question:
Study 1 was correlational and involved 96 students. The results were
supportive at <.001
Study 2 was an experiment (no need to go into the details) involving 56
students. The results were, in the authors words, "tangentially" supportive
with p<.06
I think the study was well conducted so I don't mean to slight the researchers.
My guess is that if they used more subjects they probably would have reached
p<.05 - but would that have been an example of "selective stopping"? I assume
it would be.
So how exactly does a researcher determine beforehand - as we are suggesting
they do - the number of subjects they ought to try to get for the study? I'm
just not familiar with the process. Does one look at the effect sizes of
previous related studies to determine if the effect is large or small and then
make a decision? But let's say the effect is assumed to be small, so do you
use 100 subjects? 500? How is this number determined?
Appreciate the insight in this.
Michael
Michael A. Britt, Ph.D.
[email protected]
http://www.ThePsychFiles.com
Twitter: @mbritt
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