THE NULL-HYPOTHESIS SIGNIFICANCE-TEST PROCEDURE IS STILL WARRANTED - RESPONSE

Entertaining diverse assumptions about empirical research, commentator s give a wide range of verdicts on the NHSTP defence in Statistical si gnificance. The null-hypothesis significance-test procedure (NHSTP) is defended in a framework in which deductive and inductive rules are de ployed in theory corroboration in the spirit of Popper's Conjectures a nd refutations (1968b). The defensible hypothetico-deductive structure of the framework is used to make explicit the distinctions between (1 ) substantive and statistical hypotheses, (2) statistical alternative and conceptual alternative hypotheses, and (3) making statistical deci sions and drawing theoretical conclusions. These distinctions make it easier to show that (1) H-0 can be true, (2) the effect size is irrele vant to theory corroboration. and (3) ''strong'' hypotheses make no di fference to NHSTP. Reservations about statistical power meta-analysis, and the Bayesian approach are still warranted.