Corrections for Type I Error in Social Science Research: A Disconnect between Theory and Practice

Abstract

Type I errors are a common problem in factorial ANOVA and ANOVA based analyses. Despite decades of literature offering solutions to the Type I error problems associated with multiple significance tests, simple solutions such as Bonferroni corrections have been largely ignored by social scientists. To examine this discontinuity between theory and practice, a content analysis was performed on 5 flagship social science journals. Results indicate that corrections for Type I error are seldom utilized, even in designs so complicated as to almost guarantee erroneous rejection of null hypotheses.