NotesFAQContact Us
Collection
Advanced
Search Tips
Back to results
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
ERIC Number: EJ1201541
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Feb
Pages: 22
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0013-1644
EISSN: N/A
From a Sampling Precision Perspective, Skewness Is a Friend and Not an Enemy!
Trafimow, David; Wang, Tonghui; Wang, Cong
Educational and Psychological Measurement, v79 n1 p129-150 Feb 2019
Two recent publications in "Educational and Psychological Measurement" advocated that researchers consider using the a priori procedure. According to this procedure, the researcher specifies, prior to data collection, how close she wishes her sample mean(s) to be to the corresponding population mean(s), and the desired probability of being that close. A priori equations provide the necessary sample size to meet specifications under the normal distribution. Or, if sample size is taken as given, a priori equations provide the precision with which estimates of distribution means can be made. However, there is currently no way to perform these calculations under the more general family of skew-normal distributions. The present research provides the necessary equations. In addition, we show how skewness can increase the precision with which locations of distributions can be estimated. This conclusion, based on the perspective of improving sampling precision, contrasts with a typical argument in favor of performing transformations to normalize skewed data for the sake of performing more efficient significance tests.
SAGE Publications. 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Tel: 800-818-7243; Tel: 805-499-9774; Fax: 800-583-2665; e-mail: journals@sagepub.com; Web site: http://sagepub.com
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A