Evidence, inference, and the "rejection" of the significance test

Abstract

Hammond (1996) reiterates Cohen's (1994) "attack" on simple-minded interpretations of significance tests and recommends the use of other statistical methods (including effect size measures and confidence intervals) in their place. Hammond's laudable aim is to inform the Australian psychology community of the resurgence of this debate in the US, and to open these issues to overdue debate here. In this paper we take the stand that the issues underlying some of the criticisms in this debate have not been well drawn. In particular, we believe that the fundamental distinction between the interpretation of probability as relative frequency and its interpretation as evidentiary-belief - a distincti..