Introduction

Discussions of issues concerning the proper technique for use of significance tests have been common in psychology. Psychological discussions that seriously question the research contribution of the tests started after H. C. Selvin’s major scrutiny of the tests in sociology with the publication of W. W. Rozeboom’s “The Fallacy of the Null Hypothesis Significance Test”. Rozeboom, like Lancelot Hogben, thinks that the firm decisions about hypotheses derived from conventional significance tests do not provide clues as to the probable validity of hypotheses, but, unlike Hogben, he thinks that scientists should work toward expressing their degree of belief about hypotheses in probability terms. Bakan’s paper, “The Test of Significance in Psychological Research”, is a general, an eclectic, and, like Rozeboom’s, a powerful indictment of the tests. D. T. Lykken also follows Baken, T. D. Sterling, and G. Tullock, in concluding that significance tests are seldom a valid guide for publication decisions.