Making the most of statistical analyses: Improving interpretation and presentation

Social scientists rarely take full advantage of the information available i n their statistical results. As a consequence, they miss opportunities to p resent quantities that are if greatest substantive interest for their resea rch and express the appropriate degree of certainty about these quantities. In this article, we offer an approach, built on the technique of statistic al simulation, to extract the currently overlooked information from any sta tistical method and to interpret and present it in a reader-friendly manner . Using this technique requires some expertise, which we try to provide her ein, but its application should make the results of quantitive articles mor e informative and transparent. To illustrate our recommendations, we replic ate the results of several published works, showing in each case how the au thors' own conclusions can be expressed more sharply and informatively, and , without changing any data statistical assumptions, how our approach revel s important new information about the research questions at hand. We also o ffer very easy-to-use software that implements our suggests.