What is the difference between statistically significant evidence and clinically significant evidence?

NUR699 What is the difference between statistically significant evidence and clinically significant evidence?

Evidence Based Practice Project

Week 6 Discussion

DQ2 What is the difference between statistically significant evidence and clinically significant evidence? How would each of these findings be used to advance an evidenced-based project?

ORDER NOW FOR AN ORIGINAL PAPER ASSIGNMENT:NUR699 What is the difference between statistically significant evidence and clinically significant evidence?
n extremely broad terms, statistical significance means that it’s likely that something is happening, while clinical significance verifies to what extent that thing is happening. Put another way: statistical significance seeks to disprove a negative, and say an event probably didn’t happen by chance; clinical significance seeks to prove a positive, and say an event did happen in a particular, measured manner.

Unfortunately, it’s also a lot more complicated than that, and this goes beyond simple semantics: a crisis on the non-replicability of scientific studies in the last decade has caused vociferous arguing about what these terms mean, and how they’re decided, and how much importance they should convey.

NURS6003 Week 6 Discussion Transition to Graduate Study
NUR699 What is the difference between statistically significant evidence and clinically significant

There’s an informal fallacy that can help illustrate aspects of that crisis, and it’s called the Texan Sharpshooter Fallacy. In this thought exercise, a Texan starts shooting at the side of a barn. When he’s run out of bullets, he walks over to the barn and paints a giant target sign, making sure to draw the center of the target around the area where the most bullets landed. Hey look, he says, I’m a sharpshooter! From a statistically significant point of view, he’s right: it couldn’t possibly have happened by chance that all those shots landed so close to the bullseye.

Now, in the academic world, that type of misrepresentation is far less exaggerated, far less common, and practically never intentional. Still, certain forces have implicitly encouraged small errors in data collection and put a priority on the wrong kinds of significance.

To put it succinctly, some academic journals and studies placed far too much importance on statistical significance, which, it turns out, sometimes isn’t all that significant. If this sounds confusing, don’t worry; it’s confusing to some extremely smart people, too.