Department of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, 63130.
Am J Phys Anthropol. 2018 May;166(1):236-245. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.23399. Epub 2018 Jan 18.
There is over 60 years of discussion in the statistical literature concerning the misuse and limitations of null hypothesis significance tests (NHST). Based on the prevalence of NHST in biological anthropology research, it appears that the discipline generally is unaware of these concerns. The p values used in NHST usually are interpreted incorrectly. A p value indicates the probability of the data given the null hypothesis. It should not be interpreted as the probability that the null hypothesis is true or as evidence for or against any specific alternative to the null hypothesis. P values are a function of both the sample size and the effect size, and therefore do not indicate whether the effect observed in the study is important, large, or small. P values have poor replicability in repeated experiments. The distribution of p values is continuous and varies from 0 to 1.0. The use of a cut-off, generally p ≤ 0.05, to separate significant from nonsignificant results, is an arbitrary dichotomization of continuous variation. In 2016, the American Statistical Association issued a statement of principles regarding the misinterpretation of NHST, the first time it has done so regarding a specific statistical procedure in its 180-year history. Effect sizes and confidence intervals, which can be calculated for any data used to calculate p values, provide more and better information about tested hypotheses than p values and NHST.
在统计学文献中，关于无效假设显著性检验（NHST）的误用和局限性的讨论已经超过 60 年。基于 NHST 在生物人类学研究中的普遍存在，似乎该学科普遍没有意识到这些问题。NHST 中使用的 p 值通常被错误地解释。p 值表示给定零假设时数据的概率。它不应该被解释为零假设为真的概率，也不应该被解释为支持或反对零假设的任何特定替代方案的证据。p 值是样本量和效应量的函数，因此并不能说明研究中观察到的效应是否重要、大或小。p 值在重复实验中的可重复性较差。p 值的分布是连续的，范围从 0 到 1.0。使用截止值（通常为 p ≤ 0.05）将显著结果与非显著结果分开，是对连续变化的任意二分法。2016 年，美国统计协会就 NHST 的误解发表了一项原则声明，这是其 180 年历史上首次针对特定统计程序发表此类声明。可以为用于计算 p 值的任何数据计算效应量和置信区间，比 p 值和 NHST 提供更多和更好的关于检验假设的信息。
