rpsychologist / rpsychologist-com

Source code for https://rpsychologist.com
https://rpsychologist.com
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[pvalue] Confusion arising from multiple goals? #33

Open lbelzile opened 3 years ago

lbelzile commented 3 years ago

I asked students from a PhD course to look at the p-value app and they were very confused by the p-hacking tool. I am sharing their feedback in the hope it helps with the development. I think the confusion stems from trying to achieve two separate demonstrations.

  1. the problem of selective reporting: if only 'statistically significant' studies get published, the average effect size of those studies is biased upwards. This bias is more acute if the sample size per group is low (parameter 1) or if Cohen's d is close to zero (parameter 2).
  2. The p-hacking tool (a misnomer?) is used to investigate the effect of sequential testing under which data are added until the study achieves statistical significance. In this instance, the bias is due to lack of acknowledgement of the stopping rule. The p-value will decrease as sample size increases, but the average effect size would be weighted by sample size (I arguably did not check if it was the case).