I poo poo on your significance tests #AAPOR #MRX

What affects survey responses?
– color of the page
– images on the page
– wording choices
– question length
– survey length
– scale choices

All of these options, plus about infinity more, mean that confidence intervals and point estimates from any research are pointless.

And yet, we spew out out significance testing at every possible opportunity. You know, when sample sizes are in the thousands, even the tiniest of differences are statistically significant. Even meaningless differences. Even differences caused by the page colour not the question content.

So enough with the stat testing. If you don’t talk about effect sizes and meaningfulness , then I’m not interested.

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