Abstract

LOUREIRO, Luís Manuel de Jesus  and  GAMEIRO, Manuel Gonçalves Henriques. Critical interpretation of statistical results: beyond statistical significance. Rev. Enf. Ref. [online]. 2011, vol.serIII, n.3, pp.151-162. ISSN 0874-0283.

This paper aims to describe and analyse the decision-making process (conclusive and interpretative) in statistics when performing hypothesis tests. The logic of the decision process is presented, as well as the concepts of type I and type II errors, power of the test and effect size. We also make demonstrations of effect size «d» measure. This paper targets two critical situations: results of statistical significance but no real clinical significance, and results without statistical significance but which are due to problems related to the nature of the phenomena, small effect size and small sample size.

Keywords : inference errors; effect size; power test; significance.

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