TY - JOUR
T1 - Marginally Significant Effects as Evidence for Hypotheses
T2 - Changing Attitudes Over Four Decades
AU - Pritschet, Laura
AU - Powell, Derek
AU - Horne, Zachary
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, © The Author(s) 2016.
PY - 2016/7/1
Y1 - 2016/7/1
N2 - Some effects are statistically significant. Other effects do not reach the threshold of statistical significance and are sometimes described as “marginally significant” or as “approaching significance.” Although the concept of marginal significance is widely deployed in academic psychology, there has been very little systematic examination of psychologists’ attitudes toward these effects. Here, we report an observational study in which we investigated psychologists’ attitudes concerning marginal significance by examining their language in over 1,500 articles published in top-tier cognitive, developmental, and social psychology journals. We observed a large change over the course of four decades in psychologists’ tendency to describe a p value as marginally significant, and overall rates of use appear to differ across subfields. We discuss possible explanations for these findings, as well as their implications for psychological research.
AB - Some effects are statistically significant. Other effects do not reach the threshold of statistical significance and are sometimes described as “marginally significant” or as “approaching significance.” Although the concept of marginal significance is widely deployed in academic psychology, there has been very little systematic examination of psychologists’ attitudes toward these effects. Here, we report an observational study in which we investigated psychologists’ attitudes concerning marginal significance by examining their language in over 1,500 articles published in top-tier cognitive, developmental, and social psychology journals. We observed a large change over the course of four decades in psychologists’ tendency to describe a p value as marginally significant, and overall rates of use appear to differ across subfields. We discuss possible explanations for these findings, as well as their implications for psychological research.
KW - marginal significance
KW - methodology
KW - null-hypothesis significance testing
KW - open data
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U2 - 10.1177/0956797616645672
DO - 10.1177/0956797616645672
M3 - Article
C2 - 27207874
AN - SCOPUS:84978531850
SN - 0956-7976
VL - 27
SP - 1036
EP - 1042
JO - Psychological Science
JF - Psychological Science
IS - 7
ER -