Re: Statistical Conventions in Social Science papers?

Perhaps these conventions were understood in social science circle.

"cody" <dorpus@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1167323570.981381.135460@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
My girlfriend showed me a social science paper that she was required to
read for class. Without going into too many details that would turn
this into a personal attack, it was written by a European professor
whose English was utterly illiterate. The paper gave a table that
summarized the scores from surveys, with respondents split into four
categories.

- The table talked about the "F test with 4 df", apparently referring
to the test for overall differences. Is it allowed to just drop the
denominator df like that, or is the writer just illiterate in
statistics as well?

- The table just gave F-statistics without saying their p-values. I'm
guessing again that that's just poor statistics?

- The paper also said stuff like "2 < 1,3,4" in comparing the group
means. I don't recall seeing that sort of notation in my categorical
data analysis course; it would seem to bring up a multiple testing
issue as well. Is this an accepted convention, or more illiteracy?



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