The New Statistics: Why and How

We need to make substantial changes to how we conduct research. First, in response to heightened concern that our published research literature is incomplete and untrustworthy, we need new requirements to ensure research integrity. These include prespecification of studies whenever possible, avoidan...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological science 2014-01, Vol.25 (1), p.7-29
Main Author: Cumming, Geoff
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Biomedical Research - standards
Computer software
Confidence interval
Confidence intervals
Data analysis
Data Interpretation, Statistical
Estimation
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Hierarchical scales
Humans
Means testing
Meta analysis
P values
Psychology - standards
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychometrics. Statistics. Methodology
Quantitative analysis
Research biases
Research methods
Sample size
Standard deviation
Statistical analysis
Statistical significance
Statistics
Statistics as Topic - standards
Statistics. Mathematics
Systematic review
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We need to make substantial changes to how we conduct research. First, in response to heightened concern that our published research literature is incomplete and untrustworthy, we need new requirements to ensure research integrity. These include prespecification of studies whenever possible, avoidance of selection and other inappropriate dataanalytic practices, complete reporting, and encouragement of replication. Second, in response to renewed recognition of the severe flaws of null-hypothesis significance testing (NHST), we need to shift from reliance on NHST to estimation and other preferred techniques. The new statistics refers to recommended practices, including estimation based on effect sizes, confidence intervals, and meta-analysis. The techniques are not new, but adopting them widely would be new for many researchers, as well as highly beneficial. This article explains why the new statistics are important and offers guidance for their use. It describes an eight-step new-statistics strategy for research with integrity, which starts with formulation of research questions in estimation terms, has no place for NHST, and is aimed at building a cumulative quantitative discipline.
ISSN:0956-7976
1467-9280
DOI:10.1177/0956797613504966