Recently, Stephen Gorard has outlined strong objections to the use of significance testing in social research. He has argued, first, that as the samples used in social research are almost always non-random it is not possible to use inferential statistical techniques and, second, that even if a truly random sample were achieved, the logic behind…

Purpose: Recent educational research has demonstrated rural-urban gaps in achievement and schooling conditions. Evidence from developing countries is still sparse. This study seeks to report rural-urban disparities in achievement, student, teacher, and school characteristics based on a nationally representative sample of grade four students from…

Criticizes an article in which S. A. Cohen and J. S. Hyman describe as "suspicious" the high proportion of statistically significant findings reported in published educational research journals and offers alternative explanations for the high statistical power reported. (GC)

A dialog between two fictional teachers provides some basic examples of how research that uses approved methodology may provide results that are significant statistically but not significant practically. (PGD)

The second half of a dialogue between two fictional teachers examines the significance of statistical significance in research and considers the factors affecting the extent to which research results provide important or useful information. (PGD)

The use of and emphasis on statistical significance testing has pervaded educational and behavioral research for many decades in spite of criticism by prominent researchers in this field. Much of the controversy is caused by lack of understanding or misinterpretations. This paper reviews criticisms of statistical significance testing and discusses…

Practical significance is concerned with whether a research result is useful in the real world. The use of procedures to supplement the null hypothesis significance test in four journals of the American Psychological Association is examined, and an approach to assessing practical significance is presented. (SLD)

Discusses (1) the use of chi square significance tests in social science and educational literature; (2) chi square in relation to sample size; (3) field difficulties with chi square analysis as exemplified in Milwaukee County Juvenile Court data; and (4) alternative methods for using chi square in field research. (Author/GC)

The implications of data from a review of ten years of the American Educational Research Journal (AERJ) indicating that random sampling is rare and that there is increased use of quasi-experimental designs lacking in random assignment are considered. It is suggested that tests of significance could be abandoned or at least placed in a subsidiary…

Despite the increasing criticism of statistical significance testing by researchers, particularly in the publication of the 1994 American Psychological Association's style manual, statistical significance test results are still popular in journal articles. For this reason, it remains important to understand the logic of inferential statistics. A…

Two basic methods exist for drawing probability samples to be used in telephone surveys: directory sampling (from alphabetical or street directories) and random digit dialing (RDD). RDD includes unlisted numbers, whereas directory sampling includes only listed numbers. The goal of this paper is to estimate the effect of failure to include…

The testing of research hypotheses is directly comparable to the dichotomous decision-making of medical diagnosis or jury trials--not ill/ill, or innocent/guilty decisions. There are costs in both kinds of error, type I errors of falsely rejecting a null hypothesis or type II errors of falsely rejecting an alternative hypothesis. It is important…

An influential statistics test recommends a Levene text for homogeneity of variance. A recent note suggests that Levene's test is upwardly biased for small samples. Another report shows inflated Alpha estimates and low power. Neither study utilized more than two sample sizes. This Monte Carlo study involved sampling from a normal population for…

Alternative ways of analyzing data from Aptitude Treatment Interactions were examined over a two-year period. In light of past arguments the author maintains that the questions surrounding aggregation have been badly posed and that the customary methods of analysis were either incorrect or subject to misinterpretation. Therefore, the majority of…

An empirical investigation of methodological issues associated with evaluating treatment effect in single-subject research (SSR) designs is presented. This investigation: (1) conducted a generalizability (G) study to identify the sources of systematic and random measurement error (SRME); (2) used an analytic approach based on G theory to integrate…