American Statistical Association ’

As a scholar-practitioner, it is important for you to understand that just because a hypothesis test indicates a relationship exists between an intervention and an outcome, there is a difference between groups, or there is a correlation between two constructs, it does not always provide a default measure for its importance. Although relationships are significant, they can be very minute relationships, very small differences, or very weak correlations. In the end, we need to ask whether the relationships or differences observed are large enough that we should make some practical change in policy or practice.

For this Discussion, you will explore statistical significance and meaningfulness.

To prepare for this Discussion:

• Review the Learning Resources related to hypothesis testing,      meaningfulness, and statistical significance.
• Review Magnusson’s web blog found in the Learning Resources to      further your visualization and understanding of statistical power and      significance testing.
• Review the American Statistical Association’s press release and      consider the misconceptions and misuse of p-values.