Research
Either statistical significance (unlikely due to chance, often via p-value) or practical/scholarly importance — easy to conflate.
On the statistical sense, the authoritative statement is the American Statistical Association’s Statement on Statistical Significance and P-Values of 7 March 2016 — the first time the ASA issued formal guidance on a specific statistical practice. Its six principles include: “P-values do not measure the probability that the studied hypothesis is true, or the probability that the data were produced by random chance alone”; “Scientific conclusions and business or policy decisions should not be based only on whether a p-value passes a specific threshold”; and “A p-value, or statistical significance, does not measure the size of an effect or the importance of a result.” That last principle is the bridge to this entry’s second sense: statistical significance and practical importance are different claims, and the ASA says so directly.
This entry is sourced to a body with standing over the practice it names, which is tier 1 of this lexicon’s rule for research terms. Where a definition is quoted, it is the body’s own wording; the reading of what it implies is this lexicon’s.
From the AJG lexicon archive (July 2026).
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