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THE IMPORTANCE OF ESTIMATES AND CONFIDENCE INTERVALS RATHER THAN P VALUES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2001

MARGARET ELY
MARGARET ELY
Affiliation:
Centre for Family Research, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge, UK
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Abstract

The importance of reporting estimates and confidence intervals for statistical analyses has been well publicised in the arena of medical studies for some years now. The requirement to give confidence intervals for the main results of a study has been included in the statistical guidelines for contributors to medical journals since the 1980s and methodological points such as this are discussed in the Statistical Notes section of the British Medical Journal. If the use of quantitative methods in British sociology is to be encouraged, as Frank Bechhofer (1996) suggests is needed, it is important to have a forum for the dissemination of basic methodological issues which is accessible to researchers within the discipline. This note aims to achieve such dissemination by using an example from current research to illustrate this fundamental, but often overlooked, aspects of quantitative analysis.

Keywords

confidence intervalestimateP-valuesociologystatistical significance
Type
RESEARCH NOTE
Information
Sociology , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , February 1999 , pp. 185 - 190
Copyright
1999 BSA Publications Ltd

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