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Proving the Null Hypothesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 June 2016

Leon F. Burmeister
Leon F. Burmeister*
Affiliation:
Department of Preventive Medicine, The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Iowa City, Iowa
*
Department of Preventive Medicine, 2825 SB, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Iowa City, IA 52242
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Extract

In most situations in which an experimental treatment or procedure is to be compared with a standard treatment or procedure, the null hypothesis to be tested states that the two procedures are equally effective. The alternative hypothesis is likely to be one-sided and to state that the experimental procedure is better than the standard. Advocates of the new procedure would hope that trials would be large enough to provide sufficient power to detect an assumed difference between the procedures, and thus that the null hypothesis would be rejected. If so, the probability of type I error (falsely rejecting a true null hypothesis) would be noted, and the new or experimental procedure could be accepted comfortably by those considering its implementation.

Type
Statistics for Hospital Epidemiology
Information
Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , January 1992 , pp. 55 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America 1992

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References

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