Blackboard Presentation

Stats Assignment

By: Morgan Cooper

What makes statistical findings statistically significant?

John W. Creswell says : Source: Cresswell, J. (2014b). Research design. Sage Publications.

- The observed effect has occurred by chance -The null hypothesis of "No effect" can be rejected -The researcher sets a rejection level of "No Effect" such as p=0.001, and then assesses whether the test statistic falls into this level of rejection -Typicallt results will be summarized as "the analysus of varience revealed a statistically significant dufference between men and women in terms of attitudes toward banning smoking in resztaurants f(2;6)=8.55, p=0.001

What makes statistical findings practically Significant?

- 2 forms of PRACTICAL EVIDENCE of the results should be reported - 1 would be the effect size - 2 would be the confidence interval -This shows us whether the effect is large enough to be meaningful Source:Cresswell, J. (2014b). Research design. Sage Publications.

Let's Look at this research article:

Online book clubs for preteensand teens Cassandra M. Scharber Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA, and Ann Melrose and Jody Wurl Hennepin County Library, Minnetonka, Minnesota, USA

-First, it is important to point out that there were no statistics given in this case study-For the design/methodology/approach all that these authors listed was: "Two online book clubs are discussed" -There is a literature review section, and a "Investigating Online Book Clubs Offered.." section -In this section "information" is gathered about Hennepin County Library's online book clubs, a online course management system is discussed to give the reader an idea of what it is, and then more book clubs are discussed.

Statistically Significant

-There is no observed effect that has occurred by change -There is no hypthesis -There is no rejection level, or p-value -And no results were summarized -In the "conclusion" the reader only hears about what HCL plans to do with online book clubs -For these reasons I don't believe there was statistical significance

statistical significance

Practical Significance

-First it is important to look at the effect size and the confidence interval to see if this research is practically significant-The findings from this case study was that online book clubs are fun and engaging for preteens and teens -Although this was a good finding, that doesn't mean that it has practical significance -Regarding the effect size, some of the findings in this case study came from a effect size of 17 participants, 10 participants, or even 5 -Because these numbers are so low the effect size is not large enough to be meaningful -There was also no confidence interval that I could identify, so from what I have found there is so practical significance in this case study

Overall, I think the results of this case study are significant for Hennepin County Library, but definitely not anyone else researching online book clubs for pre-teens and teens.