Meaningful approaches to assessing the size of effects in memory research: applications and recommendations for study design, interpretation, and analysis

Abstract

In an earlier editorial in this journal (Howe & Otgaar, 2020),we highlighted the importance of publishing results that,although not statistically significant by traditional null-hypothesis significance testing (NHST) techniques, werepractically or theoretically important. There are a numberof well-known problems with the use of traditional NHSTprocedures (e.g., see Amrhein et al., 2019), and in this edi-torial we touch on some of these issues with respect tomemory research. More importantly, we extend our discus-sion of alternatives to NHST techniques when determiningwhether findings are practically or theoretically important,namely, through an examination of effect sizes.