Psychology remains addicted to null hypothesis significance testing despite decades of effort by reformers. Extensive changes in statistical understanding and practices are needed. The authors propose a model of reform-the statistical re-education of psychology-by making an analogy with the conceptual change model of learning. Four diverse components of reform are identified, and illustrated by brief examples of research. Reform is especially challenging because many statistics teachers in psychology first need to achieve conceptual change themselves. In relation to a highly desirable increase in use of confidence intervals (CIs), it seems that many psychologists do not understand CIs well, and guidelines for CI use are lacking. The conceptual change model is offered to guide research needed on many aspects of reform, and the important and exciting task of the statistical re-education of psychology.
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education