COM 225 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Communication Studies, Null Hypothesis, Statistical Significance
Document Summary
Communication science is generally statistical in nature. It deals with probabilities of outcomes, likelihoods and averages (usually means) for populations. We test against the null hypothesis: the idea that there is nothing happening. In any given test, there is a chance that the null would be true but that you would randomly get a result. The number of times that you would expect to get a result even if the null was true is the statistical significance of the finding. All that statistical significance means is that something is probably happening. The effect size determines whether that something is meaningful in any way. Once we have determined that something is different, effect size tells us how different it is.
