Question

2. A public school system wanted to know whether the reading levels of the students at two of its schools were different. The study that was conducted tested an enormous number of students, and concluded that students attending School A scored significantly higher than those attending School B. However, the difference between the means of the two schools was very small. What should you conclude regarding the difference in reading levels between the two schools? Explain your conclusion. Write your answer to a person who is familiar with the basic logic of hypothesis testing, but knows nothing about power. Keep your answer to one paragraph.

Answer 1

Although statistical significance was achieved in the study while testing the difference in the scores between the two schools but this does not mean that it implies clinical significance. There is a difference between statistical and clinical difference. We know that the study indicated that the results were significant as we had a strong evidence against the null hypothesis but significant results does not mean that the differences were large enough to make a clinical conclusion. A large study has the tendency to detect even small differences as significant results but with clinically unimportant findings. This was a case here as this study was done on enormous students. Therefore, clinical significance is important rather than statistical significance and we won't totally rely on the significance of the results.