IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/sagope/v3y2013i1p2158244013476873.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Making Statistical Methods More Useful

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Wood

Abstract

I present a critique of the methods used in a typical article. This leads to three broad conclusions about the conventional use of statistical methods. First, results are often reported in an unnecessarily obscure manner. Second, the null hypothesis testing paradigm is deeply flawed: Estimating the size of effects and citing confidence intervals or levels is usually better. Third, there are several issues, independent of the particular statistical concepts employed, which limit the value of any statistical approach—for example, difficulties of generalizing to different contexts and the weakness of some research in terms of the size of the effects found. The first two of these are easily remedied—I illustrate some of the possibilities by reanalyzing the data from the case study article—and the third means that in some contexts, a statistical approach may not be worthwhile. My case study is a management article, but similar problems arise in other social sciences.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Wood, 2013. "Making Statistical Methods More Useful," SAGE Open, , vol. 3(1), pages 21582440134, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:3:y:2013:i:1:p:2158244013476873
    DOI: 10.1177/2158244013476873
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244013476873
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/2158244013476873?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Wood & Richard Christy, 1999. "Sampling for Possibilities," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 33(2), pages 185-202, May.
    2. Herbert A. Simon, 1996. "The Sciences of the Artificial, 3rd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262691914, December.
    3. Lindsay, R. Murray, 1995. "Reconsidering the status of tests of significance: An alternative criterion of adequacy," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 35-53, January.
    4. M Wood & M Kaye & N Capon, 1999. "The use of resampling for estimating control chart limits," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 50(6), pages 651-659, June.
    5. J Mingers, 2006. "A critique of statistical modelling in management science from a critical realist perspective: its role within multimethodology," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 57(2), pages 202-219, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pierre-Olivier Bédard, 2015. "The Mobilization of Scientific Evidence by Public Policy Analysts," SAGE Open, , vol. 5(3), pages 21582440156, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alan Hevner & Isabelle Comyn-Wattiau & Jacky Akoka & Nicolas Prat, 2018. "A pragmatic approach for identifying and managing design science research goals and evaluation criteria," Post-Print hal-02283783, HAL.
    2. Tobias Knabke & Sebastian Olbrich, 2018. "Building novel capabilities to enable business intelligence agility: results from a quantitative study," Information Systems and e-Business Management, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 493-546, August.
    3. Sunder Shyam, 2011. "Imagined Worlds of Accounting," Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 1-14, January.
    4. Fiori Stefano, 2005. "The emergence of instructions : some open problems in Hayek's theory," CESMEP Working Papers 200504, University of Turin.
    5. McCown, R. L., 2002. "Changing systems for supporting farmers' decisions: problems, paradigms, and prospects," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 179-220, October.
    6. Jin P. Gerlach & Ronald T. Cenfetelli, 2022. "Overcoming the Single-IS Paradigm in Individual-Level IS Research," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 33(2), pages 476-488, June.
    7. Basile, Luigi Jesus & Carbonara, Nunzia & Pellegrino, Roberta & Panniello, Umberto, 2023. "Business intelligence in the healthcare industry: The utilization of a data-driven approach to support clinical decision making," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    8. Loris Gaio, 2005. "A diversity-based approach to requirements tracing in new product development," ROCK Working Papers 031, Department of Computer and Management Sciences, University of Trento, Italy, revised 13 Jun 2008.
    9. B. A. Huberman & N. S. Glance, "undated". "Diversity and Collective Action," Working Papers _001, Xerox Research Park.
    10. Zhewei Zhang & Youngjin Yoo & Kalle Lyytinen & Aron Lindberg, 2021. "The Unknowability of Autonomous Tools and the Liminal Experience of Their Use," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 32(4), pages 1192-1213, December.
    11. Juval Portugali & Egbert Stolk, 2014. "A SIRN View on Design Thinking—An Urban Design Perspective," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 41(5), pages 829-846, October.
    12. Gilbert Giacomoni & Adel Aloui, 2018. "Imaginaire et imitation du réel : genèse des idées et sciences de l’artificiel," Post-Print hal-01941661, HAL.
    13. Funk, Jeffery, 2009. "Components, systems and discontinuities: The case of magnetic recording and playback equipment," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(7), pages 1192-1202, September.
    14. Richard Holt & J. Barkley Rosser & David Colander, 2011. "The Complexity Era in Economics," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(3), pages 357-369.
    15. David Stadelmann & Benno Torgler, 2012. "Bounded Rationality and Voting Decisions Exploring a 160-Year Period," Working Papers 2012.70, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    16. Karén Hovhannissian & Marco Valente, 2004. "Modeling Directed Local Search Strategies on Technology Landscapes: Depth and Breadth," ROCK Working Papers 028, Department of Computer and Management Sciences, University of Trento, Italy, revised 17 Jun 2008.
    17. Pan Guo & Xiaofeng Li & Yanlin Jia & Xu Zhang, 2020. "Cloud Model-Based Comprehensive Evaluation Method for Entrepreneurs’ Uncertainty Tolerance," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(9), pages 1-14, September.
    18. Marie-José Avenier & Catherine Thomas, 2015. "Finding one's way around various methodological guidelines for doing rigorous case studies: A comparison of four epistemological frameworks [Se frayer un chemin parmi les différentes recommandation," Post-Print halshs-01491454, HAL.
    19. Francis Marleau Donais & Irène Abi-Zeid & E. Owen D. Waygood & Roxane Lavoie, 2021. "A Framework for Post-Project Evaluation of Multicriteria Decision Aiding Processes from the Stakeholders’ Perspective: Design and Application," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 30(5), pages 1161-1191, October.
    20. H. Christopher Frey & Sumeet R. Patil, 2002. "Identification and Review of Sensitivity Analysis Methods," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 22(3), pages 553-578, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:3:y:2013:i:1:p:2158244013476873. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.