Reporting Practices and Use of Quantitative Methods in Canadian Journal Articles in Psychology

摘要

With recent focus on the state of research in psychology, it is essential to assess the nature of the statistical methods and analyses used and reported by psychological researchers. To that end, we investigated the prevalence of different statistical procedures and the nature of statistical reporting practices in recent articles from the four major Canadian psychology journals. The majority of authors evaluated their research hypotheses through the use of analysis of variance (ANOVA), t-tests, and multiple regression. Multivariate approaches were less common. Null hypothesis significance testing remains a popular strategy, but the majority of authors reported a standardized or unstandardized effect size measure alongside their significance test results. Confidence intervals on effect sizes were infrequently employed. Many authors provided minimal details about their statistical analyses and less than a third of the articles presented on data complications such as missing data and violations of statistical assumptions. Strengths of and areas needing improvement for reporting quantitative results are highlighted. The paper concludes with recommendations for how researchers and reviewers can improve comprehension and transparency in statistical reporting.