Misuse of statistical tests in three decades of psychotherapy research.
Generate an AI Snapshot to get a quick, structured summary of this paper.
A concise AI-generated summary of the paper will appear here once you click Generate AI Snapshot.
TL;DR
This article reviews the misuse of statistical tests in psychotherapy research studies published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology in the years 1967-1968, 1977-1978, and 1987-1988 to highlight 3 major problems in statistical practice: inappropriate uses of null hypothesis tests and p values, neglect of effect size, and inflation of Type I error rate.
Abstract
This article reviews the misuse of statistical tests in psychotherapy research studies published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology in the years 1967-1968, 1977-1978, and 1987-1988. It focuses on 3 major problems in statistical practice: inappropriate uses of null hypothesis tests and p values, neglect of effect size, and inflation of Type I error rate. The impressive frequency of these problems is documented, and changes in statistical practices over the past 3 decades are interpreted in light of trends in psychotherapy research. The article concludes with practical suggestions for rational application of statistical tests.