Statistical significance testing practices in the Journal of Experimental Education

The APA Task Force on Statistical Inference (Shea, 1996), the new APA (1994) style manual, and a recent series of articles on statistical significance testing (cf. Kirk, 1996; Schmidt, 1996; Thompson, 1996, 1997) all have prompted closer scrutiny of contemporary analytic practices. It has been suggested that the field should move away from emphasizing statistical significance tests and toward emphasizing evaluations of(a) practical significance and (b) result replicability. In the present study, 3 aspects of recommended practice in all the quantitative reports in Volumes 63 and 64 (academic years 1994-1995 and 1995-1996) of The Journal of Experimental Education (JXE) were examined. Examples of both errors and desirable practices were noted. The new JXE guidelines for contributors should result in further improvements in the use and reporting of statistical significance tests.