If you use an old bathroom scale to weigh yourself and step on and off it a few times, you’ll probably get different readings, even within seconds. These measurements of your weight (more correctly, your mass, but I’ll stay with weight) vary randomly. But they shouldn’t. Unfortunately, old bathroom scales produce weights that are not …
Lessons from an old bathroom scale on measurement reliability Read More »
Effect size: How strong are your statistical results, even your significant ones? In a previous post, I spoke about what a significant result means and doesn’t mean. A significant result may mean very little, not necessarily anything to inspire you to throw a party or make a supportive parent proud. What it doesn’t tell …
Effect size: How strong are your statistical results, even your significant ones? Read More »
If you’re involved in research, you’ve likely come across the notation ‘p < .05’ in journal articles or elsewhere, or you’re using this notation in your own writing to indicate a statistically significant result. It is used pretty much everywhere, almost as a mantra across research studies. But do you know what p < …
Sometimes, despite all your efforts, the sample size of your quantitative study turns out to be smaller than you planned. Maybe you received a low response rate to your online survey, your database search for patient records returned many unusable or missing records, or you found yourself in another scenario with a similar outcome. And …