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The Perils of p-Values: Why Tests of Statistical Significance Impede the Progress of Research

An Open Letter to Psychotherapy Researchers

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Part of the book series: Current Clinical Psychiatry ((CCPSY))

Abstract

Imagine that you conduct an experiment to determine whether a new form of psychotherapy is more effective than treatment as usual. You analyze the data and find them to be statistically significant with a p-value that is less than 5%. How accurately does the following paragraph describe your understanding of the meaning of these results?

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Correspondence to John M. Kelley .

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© 2009 Humana Press, a part of Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Kelley, J.M. (2009). The Perils of p-Values: Why Tests of Statistical Significance Impede the Progress of Research. In: Levy, R.A., Ablon, J.S. (eds) Handbook of Evidence-Based Psychodynamic Psychotherapy. Current Clinical Psychiatry. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59745-444-5_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59745-444-5_16

  • Publisher Name: Humana Press

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-934115-11-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-59745-444-5

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