Report Confidence Intervals and Effect Sizes, not p Values!

Several journals have already reacted to the p value debate. For example, an ASQ essay provides suggestions that not only every editor should read. Another example are the policies published by SMJ: SMJ “will no longer accept papers for publication that report or refer to cut-off levels of statistical significance (p-values)”. Instead, “authors should report either standard errors or exact p-values (without asterisks) or both, and should interpret these values appropriately in the text”. “[T]he discussion could report confidence intervals, explain the standard errors and/or the probability of observing the results in the particular sample, and assess the implications for the research questions or hypotheses tested.” SMJ will also require authors to “explicitly discuss and interpret effect sizes of relevant estimated coefficients”. It might well be that we are currently observing the beginning of the end of null-hypothesis statistical tests. And it might only be a matter of time before other journals, also SCM journals, require authors to remove references to statistical significance and statistical hypothesis testing and, ultimately, to remove p values from their manuscripts.