Making the Most of Statistical Analyses: Improving Interpretation and Presentation

Social scientists rarely take full advantage of the information available in their statistical results. As a consequence, they miss opportunities to present quantities that are of greatest substantive interest for their research, and to express their degree of certainty about these quantities. In this article, the authors offer an approach, built on the technique of statistical simulation, to extract the currently overlooked information from any statistical method, no matter how complicated, and to interpret and present it in a reader-friendly manner. Using this technique requires some sophistication, but its application should make the results of quantitative articles more informative and transparent to all. To illustrate their recommendations, the authors replicate the results of several published works, showing in each case how the authors' own conclusions could be expressed more sharply and informatively, and how this approach reveals important new information about the research questions at hand.