What is "Statistically Significant"?

Sources:

• What is Statistical Significance? (Statistics How To)

Overview

• It means that the results likely did not happen by chance.

• If results are not statistically significant:

  • Doesn't show anything.

  • The null hypothesis can't be rejected.

Statistical significance is a measure of whether your research findings are meaningful. More specifically, it’s whether your stat closely matches what value you would expect to find in an entire population. In order to test for statistical significance, perform these steps:

1. Decide on an alpha level. An alpha level is the error rate you are willing to work with (usually 5% or less).

2. Conduct the research.

3. Calculate a statistic (from a data sample).

4. Compare the statistic with one statistic from a statistical table.