ABSTRACT
References .............................................................................................................................................. 553 Exercises ............................................................................................................................. 553
All of the previously discussed stochastic analyses were concerned with appraising results for a single
scientific
hypothesis. The scientific goal, the observed result, and the stochastic test may or may not have been in full agreement (as discussed throughout Section 24.8), but the testing itself was aimed at a single main
scientific
hypothesis. This chapter is concerned with three situations that involve multiple stochastic testing. It can occur
for different hypotheses in the same set of data, for repeated checks of accruing data for the same hypothesis, or for new tests of aggregates of data that previously received hypothesis tests. In the first procedure, which is often called
multiple comparisons
, the results of a single study are arranged into a series of individual contrasts, each of which is tested for “significance” under a separate stochastic hypothesis. In the second procedure, often called
sequential testing
, only a single hypothesis is evaluated, but it is tested repeatedly in a set of accumulating data. In the third procedure, which occurs during an activity called
meta-analysis
, a hypothesis that has previously been checked in each of several studies is tested again after their individual results have been combined.
