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A Psychologist’s View on Bayesian Evaluation of Informative Hypotheses

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Bayesian Evaluation of Informative Hypotheses

Abstract

Psychologists, like other scientists, gather and analyse data to evaluate the explanatory power of theories. Typically they build on earlier studies, explicitly or implicitly formulating competing hypotheses and inferring different predictions about, for instance, the relative scores of different groups on an outcome measure in an experimental study. As a means to test their theories, psychologists are accustomed to the classical statistical tradition and most of them apply null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) that is dominant within this tradition. They are trained to use the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), which centers on NHST, and train their students to do the same.

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Correspondence to Marleen Rijkeboer .

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Rijkeboer, M., van den Hout, M. (2008). A Psychologist’s View on Bayesian Evaluation of Informative Hypotheses. In: Hoijtink, H., Klugkist, I., Boelen, P.A. (eds) Bayesian Evaluation of Informative Hypotheses. Statistics for Social and Behavioral Sciences. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09612-4_14

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