Statistical Significance and Evidenced-Based Policies: A Realistic View

The call for evidenced-based policies in the field of education has prompted the encouragement of a greater reliance on experimental designs. Without an awareness of the limitations of Null Hypothesis Statistical Testing (NHST), these changes will likely fail in making educational research more influential. NHST does not yield practical information. Researchers and educators must work together to develop theory that is meaningful and practical that can be tested and replicated over time. The purpose of this article is to revisit the limitations of NHST while explaining how these limitations are important to practitioners