'Sing Me a Song with Social Significance': The (Mis)Use of Statistical Significance Testing in European Sociological Research
'Sing Me a Song with Social Significance': The (Mis)Use of Statistical Significance Testing in European Sociological Research
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DOI：
10.1093/esr/jcw047
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发表时间：
2017-02-01
影响因子：
3.2
通讯作者：
Leopold, Liliya
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Bernardi, Fabrizio;Chakhaia, Lela;Leopold, Liliya
在这篇文章中，我们分析了欧洲社会学家之间的零假设显著性检验的仪式。重点是统计意义和实质性社会学意义之间的区别。我们回顾了2000 - 2004年和2010 - 2014年间发表在欧洲社会学评论上的所有使用回归模型的文章（N = 356）。我们的主要目的是确定作者是否讨论了他们发现的效应量，并区分实质性和统计学意义。我们对每篇文章进行了五项问卷调查，发现大约一半的文章错误地将统计上不显著的系数解释为零效应，而只有三分之一的文章讨论了效应大小的实质意义。此外，我们的研究结果显示，在过去15年中，显著性检验的实践出现了负面趋势。这些结果与经济学领域的可比综述相似。最后，我们提供了一套建议，如何减少滥用的显着性测试在社会学研究中，通过一个明智的基准的结果。
In this article, we analyse the ritual of null hypothesis significance testing among the European sociologists. The focus is on the distinction between statistical significance and substantive, sociological significance. We review all articles published in the European Sociological Review between 2000-2004 and 2010-2014 that use regression models (N = 356). Our main aim is to determine whether the authors discuss the effect size of their findings and distinguish substantive from statistical significance. We apply a five-item questionnaire to each article and find that about half of the articles erroneously interpret a statistically insignificant coefficient as a zero effect, while only one in three engage in a discussion of the substantive meaning of the effect sizes. Moreover, our findings show a negative trend in the practice of significance testing over the past 15 years. These results are similar to those of the comparable review in the field of economics. We conclude by providing a set of recommendations on how to reduce the misuse of significance testing in sociological research, through an informed benchmarking of the findings.