Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Roundtable: Statistically Significant or Not? Does It Matter? Implications of the American Statistical Association Statement on Statistical Significance and P-Values

(Tools of Analysis: Methods, Data, Informatics and Research Design)

The Board of Directors of the American Statistical Association (ASA) recently took an unprecedented step in its history by issuing a policy statement about statistical significance and p-values. This statement focuses on the p-value, a statistic that is too often misunderstood and misused in the research community. The ASA statement is designed to usher in a post p-value era to bring the full force of statistical analysis to producing scientific evidence. This roundtable will discuss the implications of this statement for generating evidence on program and policy effectiveness. The panelists include the executive director of the ASA and a set of researcher and practitioners who are users of evidence in making program and policy decisions.