| Description |
Empirical political science is not simply about reporting evidence; it is also about coming to conclusions on the basis of that evidence and acting on those conclusions. But whether a result is substantively significant---strong and certain enough to justify acting upon the belief that the null hypothesis is false---is difficult to objectively pin down, in part because different researchers have different standards for interpreting evidence. Instead, we advocate judging results according to their âÃÂÃÂsubstantive robustness,âÃÂàthe degree to which a community with heterogeneous standards for interpreting evidence would agree that the result is substantively significant. We illustrate how this can be done using Bayesian statistical decision techniques. Judging results in this way yields a tangible benefit: false positives are reduced without decreasing the power of the test, decreasing the error rate in published results.
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