Trying to understand, in statistics (related to psychology), what does statistical significance and confidence interval mean exactly?

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As said above, I am trying to understand what statistical significance and confidence interval means. I am a psychology major whose reading a chapter for my Research Methods in Psychology class. The books definition is not helpful. Investopedia’s definition is better, but not enough.

So far, to my understanding, statistical significance refers to a claim that set of data that are not the result of pure chance, but instead are the result of a specific cause. What is a great example of statistical significance?

As for confidence interval (CI), It seems to be a probability that a parameter will fall between a set of values. In my case, this relates to the correlation coefficient (r). What is a great example and explanation of CI?

In: Mathematics

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Hey OP, just a heads up, when it comes to the task of interpreting p values and confidence intervals, one should approach with extreme caution as they are among the most misunderstood and abused tools in all of science. It has been my experience that most people inadvertently include at least one partially incorrect interpretation in their attempt to explain them to beginners.

This article does an excellent job summarizing the various pitfalls that must be avoided when interpreting them.
[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-016-0149-3](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-016-0149-3)

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