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The (mis)reporting of statistical results in psychology journals

In order to study the prevalence, nature (direction), and causes of reporting errors in psychology, we checked the consistency of reported test statistics, degrees of freedom, and p values in a random sample of high- and low-impact psychology journals. In a second study, we established the generalit...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Bakker, Marjan, Wicherts, Jelte M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer-Verlag 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3174372/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21494917
http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13428-011-0089-5
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author Bakker, Marjan
Wicherts, Jelte M.
author_facet Bakker, Marjan
Wicherts, Jelte M.
author_sort Bakker, Marjan
collection PubMed
description In order to study the prevalence, nature (direction), and causes of reporting errors in psychology, we checked the consistency of reported test statistics, degrees of freedom, and p values in a random sample of high- and low-impact psychology journals. In a second study, we established the generality of reporting errors in a random sample of recent psychological articles. Our results, on the basis of 281 articles, indicate that around 18% of statistical results in the psychological literature are incorrectly reported. Inconsistencies were more common in low-impact journals than in high-impact journals. Moreover, around 15% of the articles contained at least one statistical conclusion that proved, upon recalculation, to be incorrect; that is, recalculation rendered the previously significant result insignificant, or vice versa. These errors were often in line with researchers’ expectations. We classified the most common errors and contacted authors to shed light on the origins of the errors.
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spelling pubmed-31743722011-09-26 The (mis)reporting of statistical results in psychology journals Bakker, Marjan Wicherts, Jelte M. Behav Res Methods Article In order to study the prevalence, nature (direction), and causes of reporting errors in psychology, we checked the consistency of reported test statistics, degrees of freedom, and p values in a random sample of high- and low-impact psychology journals. In a second study, we established the generality of reporting errors in a random sample of recent psychological articles. Our results, on the basis of 281 articles, indicate that around 18% of statistical results in the psychological literature are incorrectly reported. Inconsistencies were more common in low-impact journals than in high-impact journals. Moreover, around 15% of the articles contained at least one statistical conclusion that proved, upon recalculation, to be incorrect; that is, recalculation rendered the previously significant result insignificant, or vice versa. These errors were often in line with researchers’ expectations. We classified the most common errors and contacted authors to shed light on the origins of the errors. Springer-Verlag 2011-04-15 2011 /pmc/articles/PMC3174372/ /pubmed/21494917 http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13428-011-0089-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2011 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
spellingShingle Article
Bakker, Marjan
Wicherts, Jelte M.
The (mis)reporting of statistical results in psychology journals
title The (mis)reporting of statistical results in psychology journals
title_full The (mis)reporting of statistical results in psychology journals
title_fullStr The (mis)reporting of statistical results in psychology journals
title_full_unstemmed The (mis)reporting of statistical results in psychology journals
title_short The (mis)reporting of statistical results in psychology journals
title_sort (mis)reporting of statistical results in psychology journals
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3174372/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21494917
http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13428-011-0089-5
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