I am at a conference in Milwaukee, and here is what one researcher had up on her PPTs:

We looked at affect sizes and paired t-tests

Would you take this research seriously?

Well...


"affect" does have a rare noun usage (subjective emotional response) so I suppose there is a very slim possibility it was the word meant.

"paired t-tests" I have no idea what it's actually supposed to be so it's plausible that it might mean something.

Whether I'd trust the research or not would depend on the rest of the research.

And do you remember when I told you about a slide at a whole college presentation by our quality control division?

The final slide said

"ANY QUESTION'S?"

Effect size is the term she should have used, but I can't see anything wrong with paired t-tests.

quote:

Originally posted by Graham Nice:
Effect size is the term she should have used, but I can't see anything wrong with paired t-tests.

Graham, I disagree. Many psychology texts refer to affect[/]as a noun, as Bob says. However, given the context, "size" is awkward. I'd think something like [i]affect intensity, or some such term, would make it clearer.

No, Geoff and Bob. In the field it is "effect" sizes. I am very sure of that. I realize it might just have been a typo, but it sure made me wonder about the validity of the whole study. I suppose that is superficial thinking.

There isn't anything wrong paired t-tests.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
I am at a conference in Milwaukee, and here is what one researcher had up on her PPTs:

We looked at affect sizes and paired t-tests

Would you take this research seriously?

I have no idea what PPTs, affect sizes and paired t-tests are.

I have no idea what PPTs

PowerPoint slides. (It's from the file extension .ppt.)

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
There isn't anything wrong [with] paired t-tests.

So why draw attention to it then?

Good question. I see that I italicized both of them. I guess I was just quoting her slides, but I can see where I caused confusion. Sorry about that!

Tinman, an effect size is a common term in research, and I thought maybe it was a general term as well. Maybe not. A t-test is a fairly common statistic, but again, maybe not as common as I had thought.

I actually thought PPT was an abbreviation for PowerPoint, but your explanation makes perfect sense, z.