Question

Post your response to the scenario in which you critically evaluate this footnote. As a reader/reviewer, what response would you provide to the authors about this footnote?

Consider the scenario:

A research paper claims a meaningful contribution to the literature based on finding statistically significant relationships between predictor and response variables. In the footnotes, you see the following statement, “given this research was exploratory in nature, traditional levels of significance to reject the null hypotheses were relaxed to the .10 level.

Answer 1

The footnote: "given this research was exploratory in nature, traditional levels of significance to reject the null hypotheses were relaxed to the .10 level."

Critical evaluation:

An exploratory research is one where the researcher aims at finding out about the research problems and is not aiming at drawing final conclusions from it. It is an exploration of the study since it has not been studied clearly before. A research is exploratory in nature when:

a) it has not been studied before

b) yet to develop it's operational definition

c) would aid in improving the final research design

Therefore, in such a case, the level of significance to reject the null hypotheses could be relaxed to 10% (.10 level) as the researcher is open to the results and has not narrowed down the expectations yet. A 10% relaxation means that there is a 10% chance of finding a difference. The value of the probability being .10 means that there is a higher probability (10%) of the results being a chance result.