oa De kwaliteit van onderzoek

Research quality: dichotomous versus meta-analytical thinking

The success of statistical reform as a means of improving the quality of quantitative research requires that individual researchers change their interpretation of the results of statistical analyses. For instance, if researchers do not change their habits of dichotomously interpreting p-values, publishing studies regardless of statistical significance may lead to incorrect interpretations of the empirical evidence across studies. Such a publication policy would be beneficial, however, if researchers think meta-analytically and focus on the estimation of effect sizes and confidence intervals.