Authors: Jose D Perezgonzalez [ed]
Haller and Krauss (2000) carried out a study on common misinterpretations of tests of significance among German psychology students and academics, which partly replicates one done by Oakes (19863). Haller and Krauss found that most participants held at least one misinterpretation out of six presented. They also found that, overall, 100% of psychology students held one or more misinterpretations (mean=2.5), almost 90% of psychology researchers also held one or more misinterpretations (mean=2), and 80% of instructors of statistics in psychology also held one or more misinterpretations (mean=1.9). The authors thought worrisome the high percentage of instructors with misinterpretations, as these may pass those misinterpretations down to students. Another interesting result, one not highlighted by the authors, though, is the high percentage of researchers (including instructors when carrying out and publishing research) with misinterpretations, as these would perpetuate those when publishing, peer-reviewing others' publications, and making research-informed decisions (such as chairing committees, granting funding, etc).
Comments: 3 pages, Journal of Knowledge Advancement & Integration (ISSN 1177-4576), Wiki of Science, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License
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[v1] 2012-11-18 17:24:14
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