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 si gnificance testing (cf. Kirk, 1996; Schmidt, 1996; Thompson, 1996, 199 7) all have prompted closer scrutiny of contemporary analytic practice s. It has been suggested that the field should move away from emphasiz ing statistical significance tests and toward emphasizing evaluations of(a) practical significance and (b) result replicability. In the pres ent study, 3 aspects of recommended practice in all the quantitative r eports in Volumes 63 and 64 (academic years 1994-1995 and 1995-1996) o f The Journal of Experimental Education (JXE) were examined. Examples of both errors and desirable practices were noted. The new JXE guideli nes for contributors should result in further improvements in the use and reporting of statistical significance tests.