"Highly significant" conflates statistical rarity with impact (importance of the effect, the size of the effect).
On the other hand, I think "approaching significance" can be useful and I will defend that practice (although I wouldn't push its use in a publication). Many statisticians note the arbitrariness of the decision criterion (the magical .05) and argue that a result that would occur randomly with a probability of .051 or .052 or .06 (I could go on . . . it is a slippery slope) deserves closer examination than just deciding that the result is does not meet the criterion to be declared statistically reliable. This rigidness in the decision process seems to reinforce the too-common treatment of statistical analysis as a ritual of taking out data (our sacrificial goat, as it were) to the oracle for a decision. We can be more thoughtful than this. (Abelson's excellent book, *Statistics as Principled Argument*, has some discussion of the thoughtful use of inferential statistics.) Failure to reach the criterion can occur for reasons other than absence of an effect. The near misses are worth examining. Similarly, the just-made-it "successes" deserve replication and questions about Type I Errors. Claudia _____________________________________________ Claudia J. Stanny, Ph.D. Director Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Associate Professor NSF UWF Faculty ADVANCE Scholar School of Psychological and Behavioral Sciences University of West Florida 11000 University Parkway Pensacola, FL 32514 – 5751 Phone: (850) 857-6355 (direct) or 473-7435 (CUTLA) csta...@uwf.edu CUTLA Web Site: http://uwf.edu/cutla/ Personal Web Pages: http://uwf.edu/cstanny/website/index.htm --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=25141 or send a blank email to leave-25141-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu