At least twenty-three journals in the social sciences purportedly require authors to report effect sizes and, to a much lesser extent, confidence intervals; yet these requirements are rarely clear in the information for contributors. This article reviews some of the literature criticizing the exclusive use of null hypothesis significance testing…

The Survey of Perceived Organizational Support (SPOS) is a unidimensional measure of the general belief held by an employee that the organization is committed to him or her, values his or her continued membership, and is generally concerned about the employee's well-being. In the interest of efficiency, researchers are often compelled to use a…

This study compares student learning in employment-based internships with learning in nonemployment-based internships. Data from foundation and advanced employment-based and nonemployment-based students (N=180) indicate statistically significant gains during the academic year. Pre- and post-evaluative data from field instructors (N=22) also…

Guided by social development constructs, this article investigates race and gender differences in the initiation of various types of delinquent behavior and alcohol and marijuana use among African American and Caucasian adolescents in grades 7 through 12. In addition, this study examined the potential direct or indirect effects of parental…

Three procedures for evaluating the replicability of descriptive discriminant analysis (DDA) results are discussed. The techniques include cross-validation, the jackknife, and the bootstrap. Discriminant analysis is a multivariate technique used when group membership or classification is the focus of the analysis. DDA is used to describe major…

When analyzing open-ended or categorical questions, many times responses are cross-classified by other categorical variables. The resulting contingency tables are then analyzed using the chi square test of independence. This procedure leads to multiple significance tests and provides no method to assess higher order interactions. Loglinear…

Repeated measures experimental designs, often referred to as "within-subjects" designs, offer researchers opportunities to study research effects while "controlling" for subjects. These designs offer greater statistical power relative to sample size. However, threats to internal validity such as carryover or practice effects…

The calculation of the F statistic for a one-factor analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the construction of an ANOVA tables are easily implemented on a spreadsheet. This paper describes how to compute the p-value (observed significance level) for a particular F statistic on a spreadsheet. Decision making on a spreadsheet and applications to the…

This paper explains the underlying assumptions of the sampling distribution and its role in significance testing. To compute statistical significance, estimates of population parameters must be obtained so that only one sampling distribution is defined. A sampling distribution is the underlying distribution of a statistic. Sampling distributions…

Contrary to popular opinion, significance testing does not inform the researcher of the likelihood of the replication of results from current research findings. Result replicability has been ignored by researchers because of an overreliance on significance testing. Several alternatives have been offered to provide the researcher with more…

Different ways that dependent variables can cause multivariate significance are illustrated. It is argued that univariate tests should not be used as follow-up procedures to identify the variables that can contribute to multivariate significance. Methods that can be used to determine the contributions individual variables make to multivariate…

The purposes of the present paper are to address the historical development of statistical significance testing and to briefly examine contemporary practices regarding such testing in the light of these historical origins. Precursors leading to the advent of statistical significance testing are examined as are more recent controversies surrounding…

Provides normative data about the distribution of one measure of similarity of factor loadings, the congruence coefficient, through a Monte Carlo Technique. Matching of "chance" factor patterns was done by the method of Tucker. Statistical tests of the results, based on similarities of the method to canonical and multiple correlation,…

Maximum likelihood estimates of the free parameters, and an asymptotic likelihood-ratio test, are given for the hypothesis that one or more elements of a covariance matric are zero, and/or that two or more of its elements are equal. (Author/RC)

The data of B. D. Layton and B. Turnbull's (1974) two extra sensory perception (ESP) experiments are used to illustrate Bayesian hypothesis tests that provide more useful information than is obtained from significance tests. (Editor)