What If There Were No Significance Tests? (Multivariate Applications) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805826343 ISBN 13: 9780805826340

Publisher: Psychology Press, 1997

Synopsis

This book is the result of a spirited debate stimulated by a recent meeting of the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology. Although the viewpoints span a range of perspectives, the overriding theme that emerges states that significance testing may still be useful if supplemented with some or all of the following -- Bayesian logic, caution, confidence intervals, effect sizes and power, other goodness of approximation measures, replication and meta-analysis, sound reasoning, and theory appraisal and corroboration.

The book is organized into five general areas. The first presents an overview of significance testing issues that sythesizes the highlights of the remainder of the book. The next discusses the debate in which significance testing should be rejected or retained. The third outlines various methods that may supplement current significance testing procedures. The fourth discusses Bayesian approaches and methods and the use of confidence intervals versus significance tests. The last presents the philosophy of science perspectives.

Rather than providing definitive prescriptions, the chapters are largely suggestive of general issues, concerns, and application guidelines. The editors allow readers to choose the best way to conduct hypothesis testing in their respective fields. For anyone doing research in the social sciences, this book is bound to become "must" reading.

About this title

About the Author

Lisa L. Harlow is Professor of Psychology at the University of Rhode Island. She is the Editor of Psychological Methods and a past president of the American Psychological Association‘s Division 5.
Stanley A. Mulaik is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Georgia Institute of Technology. His research interests include philosophy of statistics and causality and objectivity.
James H. Steiger is Professor of Psychology and Human Development at Vanderbilt University. His research interests include the use of confidence intervals to evaluate the fit of statistical models.

Review

The book is applauded for its comprehensive consideration of the pros and cons of statistical hypothesis testing (and alternatives) in psychological and educational research....editors Lisa Harlow, Stanley Mulaik, and James Steiger have--with aplomb, acumen, and even evenhandedness--assembled a 'wonderful' collection of essays on the pros, cons, and others of hypothesis testing....a book that belongs on every serious researcher's shelf. And so, with a final obligatory reviewer nod of priority to Gene and Roger, two thumbs up on this one--way up!
—Educational and Psychological Measurement

What If There Were No Significance Tests? is a thought-provoking book and worthy of the attention of anyone who is interested in the question of whether significance testing has a proper role to play in psychological research and, if so, what it is.
—Journal of Mathematical Psychology

...the Harlow, Mulaik, and Steiger inaugural offering... should be required reading for every serious behavioral scientist, regardless of where a given scholar falls on the continuum of views of current statistical practice. The treatment is comprehensive, conceptually rich, and contemporary. No reader could study these chapters without being both challenged and stimulated.
—Bruce Thompson
Texas A&M University

The most valuable part of the book here reviewed is its title. For teachers of statistics it offers some shock value. Teachers who jplace the logic of null hypothesis significance testing more or less on a par with scientific logic need to be awakened quite rudely; others can at least use the title to make students sit up and listen.

Edition details

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0805826343
• ISBN 13: 9780805826340
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 466
• Editor: Harlow Lisa L., Mulaik Stanley A., Steiger James H.