Theoretical and empirical distributions of the p value

J. S. Butler () and Peter Jones ()
Additional contact information
J. S. Butler: University of Kentucky
Peter Jones: University of Alabama at Birmingham

METRON, 2018, vol. 76, issue 1, No 1, 30 pages

Abstract: Abstract The use of p values in null hypothesis statistical tests (NHST) is controversial in the history of applied statistics, owing to a number of problems. They are: arbitrary levels of Type I error, failure to trade off Type I and Type II error, misunderstanding of p values, failure to report effect sizes, and overlooking better means of reporting estimates of policy impacts, such as effect sizes, interpreted confidence intervals, and conditional frequentist tests. This paper analyzes the theory of p values and summarizes the problems with NHST. Using a large data set of public school districts in the United States, we demonstrate empirically the unreliability of p values and hypothesis tests as predicted by the theory. We offer specific suggestions for reporting policy research.

Keywords: p values; Null hypothesis statistical tests (NHST); Education finance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40300-017-0130-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:metron:v:76:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1007_s40300-017-0130-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40300

DOI: 10.1007/s40300-017-0130-2

Access Statistics for this article

METRON is currently edited by Marco Alfo'

More articles in METRON from Springer, Sapienza Università di Roma
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().