A glass of wine a day keeps the doctor away. Is it enough to just say this without any real evidence to support it? Is just wanting it to be true enough to convince you? The answer to these two questions could be the difference between acknowledging accurate information presented in a scientific article and accepting insufficient information presented in a lay article. Lay articles provide brief summaries on the concepts in documented research studies. Scientific articles thoroughly describe and report findings in research studies. In order for either article to be believable, important information should be included. This information includes the population of interest and the sample in the study, the independent and dependent variables and their levels, scale of measurement for each variable, the null and research hypothesis, the test statistic used and its significance level (p value or α value), results of the study, research errors, and the assumptions for the specific test statistic. According to Nolan and Heinzen (2011), authors of Essentials of Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences, assumptions are, “Characteristics that we ideally require the population from which we are sampling to have (scaled DV, randomly selected, normally distributed) so that we can make accurate inferences (Nolan & Heinzen, 154).” Comparing a lay article to a scientific article can aid in one’s perception of which type of article most effectively presents all of the necessary information
Thesis: Although some see alcoholism as a disease others argue that it is a deviant addiction.
Cohen’s paper The Earth is Round (p>0.05) is a critique of null-hypothesis significance testing (NHST). In his article, Cohen presents his arguments about what is wrong with NHST and suggests ways in which researchers can improve their research, as well as the way they report their research. Cohen’s main point is that researchers who use NHST often misinterpret the meaning of p-values and what can be concluded from them (Cohen, 1994). Cohen also shows that the NHST is close to worthless. NHST is a way to show how unlikely a result would be if the null hypothesis were true. A Type I error is where the researcher incorrectly rejects a true null hypothesis and a Type II error is where the researcher incorrectly accepts the false null
· Based on your review of the statistics in the study, do you agree with the study’s conclusions? Why or why not?
The article’s researchers believed that it is necessary to research the efficacy of these claimed evidence based interventions.
In order to know whether the evidence of research studies are accurate, one must be able to have a fundamental understanding in statistical analyses to determine if such descriptions and findings within manuscripts and articles are presented correctly and explicitly (Sullivan, 2012). Proper use of statistics begins with the understanding of both descriptive and inferential statistics. Correct organization and description of data characteristics from the population sample being studied leads the researcher to identify a hypothesis and formulate inferences about such characteristics. It is with inferential statistics that researchers conduct appropriate tests of significance and determine whether to accept or reject the identified null
According to Ryan, Coughlan, and Cronin (2007) having a clear overview of study, findings, methodology, recommendations amongst other criteria influences the believability of the content in a research paper. The abstract clearly and concisely outlays its objectives, designs, methods, and implications; however, the abstract did
Alcoholism is a primary, chronic disease with genetic, psychosocial, and environmental factors influencing its development and manifestations. The disease is often progressive and fatal. Alcoholism is a complex disease with physical, social and psychological consequences, but it can be treated through detoxification and anti-anxiety drugs. What will be explained in this essay is basically the history of alcohol, signs of one possibly being an alcoholic, possibilities to why one becomes an alcoholic, and treatments for it.
In order to curb his cravings for alcohol, the French doctor used a muscle relaxant named baclofen to “flip a switch” and get rid of his cravings for alcohol. He initially tried lower doses which did not seem to have an effect, but higher doses of the drug allowed the doctor to rid himself of the cravings for alcohol, and eventually he was indifferent to alcohol after the drug. Later it was found that there were more cases where this finding was supported.
The source of their data was a primary source which enameled them to have accurate information. Researches like the one provided above help educate society, specifically parents of how certain practices with their infants may be potentially putting them in grave danger rather than helping them. Although I believe this research did an exceptional job supporting their hypothesis; it would have been far more beneficial to provide information regarding additional risk factors that were among the common ones observed to have associations with
The authors relied heavily on two studies to create their argument. The first study mentioned was the Pinto et al article. In this study, "Pinto and colleagues (5) assessed the
In Fantuzzo, et al. (1991), there appears to be a lack of base line in which to rely upon the facts, due to the exclusion of what one would consider the social norms. Fantuzzo, et al. should have had a baseline in which to rely giving their study more standing.
COMMENTS argument is that because the average effect size for published research was equivalent to that of a medium effect, the reviewer 's decision to reject the bogus manuscript under the nonsignificant condition was "reasonable." Further examination of the Haase et al. (1982) article and our own analysis of published research, however, demonstrates that the power of the bogus study was great enough to detect effect sizes that are typical of research published in JCP, which was our intention when we designed the bogus study. First, although the median effect size (if) for all univariate statistical tests, significant and nonsignificant, reported by Haase et al. (1982) was .083, this index was steadily increasing at a rate of approximately .5% per year, so that the projected median if- in 1981 (the year our study was completed) would be .13. Importantly, an r)2 of .13 corresponds to an effect size (/) of .39, which Cohen (1977) designates as a large effect. A further examination of the Haase et al. (1982) data also lends support to our argument. Their analysis examined the strength of association for 11,044 univariate statistical tests derived from only 701 manuscripts; thus, each manuscript reported an average of more than 15 statistical tests. Since statistically significant and
Cullen and Gendreau compare and contrast the many studies on this subject, the meta-analyses conclusions, their strengths, weaknesses, inconsistencies, and the trends that follow the studies
Kirk (1996) had major criticisms of NHST. According to Kirk, the procedure does not tell researchers what they want to know: In scientific inference, what we want to know is the probability that the null hypothesis (H0) is true given that we have obtained a set of data (D); that is, p(H0|D). What null hypothesis significance testing tells us is the probability of obtaining these data or more extreme data if the null hypothesis is true, p(D|H0). (p. 747) Kirk (1996) went on to explain that NHST was a trivial exercise because the null hypothesis is always false, and rejecting it is merely a matter of having enough power. In this study, we investigated how textbooks treated this major problem of NHST. Current best practice in this area is open to debate (e.g., see Harlow, Mulaik, & Steiger, 1997). A number of prominent researchers advocate the use of confidence intervals in place of NHST on grounds that, for the most part, confidence intervals provide more information than a significance test and still include information necessary to determine statistical significance (Cohen, Gliner, Leech, & Morgan 85 1994; Kirk, 1996). For those who advocate the use of NHST, the null hypothesis of no difference (nil hypothesis) should be replaced by a null hypothesis specifying some nonzero value based on previous research (Cohen, 1994; Mulaik, Raju, & Harshman, 1997). Thus, there would be less chance that a trivial difference between intervention and control
Although men and women show different views, the Cramer’s V of 0.154 shows only a weak association. A bigger sample size could’ve produced different or more reliable results.