Regardless of the p-value you calculated for the statistical test for this resea
ID: 3039880 • Letter: R
Question
Regardless of the p-value you calculated for the statistical test for this research objective, assume that your p-value was less than 0.05. What is the best interpretation of your findings?
A. Because p < .05, we can reject our null hypothesis and conclude that there is an association between type of emailed instructions a patient received and the likelihood of that patient making a follow up appointment.
B. Because p < .05, we should not reject the null hypothesis and should instead conclude that there is no association between these variables.
C. Because p < .05, we can conclude that receiving a revised email caused more patients to make follow up appointments.
D. To avoid making any Type I or Type II errors (false positives or false negatives) we should not interpret this p-value.
Explanation / Answer
In the majority of analyses, an alpha of 0.05 is used as the cutoff for significance.
If the p-value is less than 0.05, we reject the null hypothesis that there's no difference between the means and conclude that a significant difference does exist.
If the p-value is larger than 0.05, we cannot conclude that a significant difference exists.
Thus, Option A (Because p < .05, we can reject our null hypothesis and conclude that there is an association between type of emailed instructions a patient received and the likelihood of that patient making a follow up appointment.)