AERA Editorial Policies regarding Statistical Significance Testing: Three Suggested Reforms

comments on Thompson (1996), it is ar-gued that describing results as signifi-cant rather than statistically signifi-cant is confusing to those persons most susceptible to misinterpreting this tele-graphic wording. Contrary to Robinson and Levins view, it is noted that the util-ity of the characterization of results as being due to nonchance is limited by the nature of the null hypothesis assumed to be true. It is suggested that effect sizes are important to interpret, even though they too can be misinterpreted; recent empirical studies of publications indicate that effect sizes are still too rarely reported. Finally, the value of external replicability analy-ses is acknowledged, but it is argued that internal replicability analyses can also be useful, and certainly are superior to statistical significance tests regarding evaluating result replicability, because sta-tistical significance tests do not evaluate replicability.