A new document has been added to the Society for Political Methodology Website.

 Title:     Testing Hypotheses of No Meaningful Effect

Author(s):     Carlisle Rainey

Entry Date:     2013-01-14

Keyword(s):     hypothesis testing, no effect, no meaningful effect, insignificance, nhst, null hypothesis significance test, null result

Abstract:      While most hypotheses in political science suggest positive or negative effects, a substantial subset of important hypotheses suggest that potential explanatory variables should have no meaningful effect on the outcome of interest. Without testing these hypotheses, empirical evaluation of theoretical arguments remains incomplete. Current practice in political science in this situation is to take a statistically insignificant effect as evidence for the research hypothesis, with an occasional discussion of whether or not the test has sufficient power. I explain that this procedure does not align with hypothesis testing conventions in political science and thus is prone to misinterpretations. In particular, a statistically insignificant effect is neither necessary nor sufficient to show that a variable has no meaningful effect. As an alternative, I introduce to political science the intersection-union method for creating tests, which allows researchers to quickly!
 
  construct tests of hypotheses of no effect using already-available software.

http://polmeth.wustl.edu/mediaDetail.php?docId=1382

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