Significance testing with incompletely randomised cases cannot possibly work

Gorard, S.

Significance testing with incompletely randomised cases cannot possibly work

Gorard, S.

Authors

Professor Stephen Gorard s.a.c.gorard@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

This brief paper illustrates why the use of significance testing cannot possibly work with incompletely randomised cases. The first section reminds readers of the logical argument of “denying the consequence”, and the fallacy of trying to affirm the consequence, of a set of premises. The second section extends the argument of the denying the consequence to the weaker situation where there is uncertainty, and the third shows that this weaker situation is the „logical‟ basis for the practice of significance testing when analysing data. The fourth section looks at how the same argument becomes a fallacy when conducting significance tests with incompletely randomised or non-random cases. The final section summarises the implications for analysts, and for their future analyses and reporting.

Citation

Gorard, S. (2018). Significance testing with incompletely randomised cases cannot possibly work. International journal of science and research methodology, 11(2), 42-51

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Nov 26, 2018
Online Publication Date	Dec 30, 2018
Publication Date	Dec 31, 2018
Deposit Date	Dec 11, 2018
Publicly Available Date	Dec 12, 2018
Journal	International journal of science and research methodology
Publisher	Human Journals
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	11
Issue	2
Pages	42-51
Publisher URL	http://ijsrm.humanjournals.com/significance-testing-with-incompletely-randomised-cases-cannot-possibly-work/