OSU Extension Blogs

For the free nitrate screening, bring 1/2 cup of untreated well water in any clean container. Screeing takes about 10 minutes when the clinic is not busy.

A groundwater educator will be on hand to answer any additional questions about further testing, wells, and septic sytems.

Sponsored by the Southern Willamette Valley Groundwater Management Area and OSU Extension Service.

The Tractor & Farm Machinery Safety course is required for students age 14 to 18 who work with tractos and other machinery in Oregon. Students receive classroom safety instructions and hands-on tractor driving experience with farm implements. A certificate will be awarded upon successful completion of this course.

www.linnbenton.edu/go/tractor-safety

The researchers at the Farmscaping for Beneficials (FSB) Project of the Integrated Plant Protection Center (IPPC) at OSU, the native plant experts at the NRCS Plant Materials Center (PMC), and the conservationists at the Xerces Society are teaming up once again to provide you an afternoon of technical support on how to “scape” your farm with native plants! 

This very popular, informative field day goes from 9:00 – 4:30 to provide you with the technical details you will need to install and enhance diverse habitat features on your farm.  We will review farmer-tested, site selection and preparation practices that will help you create successful, diverse habitats that fit into your busy, unique production plan.  The afternoon will be devoted to habitat establishment techniques and machinery used.  The morning will be devoted to learning appropriate seeded native plant selections and the beneficial insects and native pollinators associated with them. We will visit a test plot of selected native plantings in their 3rd year and an established insectary hedgerow.

Lunch is provided and registration is required.

This is a collaborative event of the Natural resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Corvallis Plant Materials Center (PMC), Oregon State University’s (OSU) Integrated Plant Protection Center (IPPC) and the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation (Xerces).

NEWPORT – The 19th annual Markham Symposium, a celebration of graduate student research and scholarship, will be held at the Oregon State University Hatfield Marine Science Center  in Newport on June 19. This year’s symposium will feature student research presentations in an exciting, fast-paced format.  Poster presentations and an informal reception will give attendees a chance to meet students and their mentors. The event, from 10 am-12:30 pm in the Visitor Center auditorium, is free and open to the public.

Read more about the Symposium in Currents, the HMSC newsletter – now available via RSS feed – and while you’re at it, check out the redesigned HMSC Website.

The  HMSC is celebrating its 47th year as a leading marine laboratory distinguished by its many collaborative research partnerships. Originally established as a marine laboratory for OSU, the center currently hosts research and education programs from seven OSU colleges and six state and federal agencies on a 49-acre campus. on the south shore of Yaquina Bay. The facility is also home to the HMSC Visitor Center, managed by Oregon Sea Grant as a public and K-12 education facility and a social laboratory for OSU’s  Free-Choice Learning Lab.

NEWPORT – The 19th annual Markham Symposium, a celebration of graduate student research and scholarship, will be held at the Oregon State University Hatfield Marine Science Center  in Newport on June 19. This year’s symposium will feature student research presentations in an exciting, fast-paced format.  Poster presentations and an informal reception will give attendees a chance to meet students and their mentors. The event, from 10 am-12:30 pm in the Visitor Center auditorium, is free and open to the public.

Read more about the Symposium in Currents, the HMSC newsletter – now available via RSS feed – and while you’re at it, check out the redesigned HMSC Website.

The  HMSC is celebrating its 47th year as a leading marine laboratory distinguished by its many collaborative research partnerships. Originally established as a marine laboratory for OSU, the center currently hosts research and education programs from seven OSU colleges and six state and federal agencies on a 49-acre campus. on the south shore of Yaquina Bay. The facility is also home to the HMSC Visitor Center, managed by Oregon Sea Grant as a public and K-12 education facility and a social laboratory for OSU’s  Free-Choice Learning Lab.

I have a few thoughts about causation, which I will get to in a bit…first, though, I want to give my answers to the post last week.

I had listed the following and wondered if you thought they were a design, a method, or an approach. (I had also asked which of the 5Cs was being addressed–clarity or consistency.)  Here is what I think about the other question.

Case study is a method used when gathering qualitative data, that is, words as opposed to numbers.  Bob Stake, Robert Brinkerhoff, Robert Yin, and others have written extensively on this method.

Pretest-post test Control Group is (according to Campbell and Stanley, 1963) an example of  a true experimental design if a control group is used (pg. 8 and 13).  NOTE: if only one group is used (according to Campbell and Stanley, 1963), pretest-post test is considered a pre-experimental design (pg. 7 and 8); still it is a design.

Ethnography is a method used when gathering qualitative data often used in evaluation by those with training in anthropology.  David Fetterman is one such person who has written on this topic.

Interpretive is an adjective use to describe the approach one uses in an inquiry (whether that inquiry is as an evaluator or a researcher) and can be traced back to the sociologists Max Weber and Wilhem Dilthey in the later part of the 19th century.

Naturalistic is  an adjective use to describe an approach with a diversity of constructions and is a function of “…what the investigator does…” (Lincoln and Guba, 1985, pg.8).

Random Control Trials (RCT) is the “gold standard” of clinical trials, now being touted as the be all and end all of experimental design; its proponents advocate the use of RCT in all inquiry as it provides the investigator with evidence that X (not Y) caused Z.

Quasi-Experimental is a term used by Campbell and Stanley(1963) to denote a design where random assignment cannot be made for ethical or practical reasons be accomplished; this is often contrasted with random selection for survey purposes.

Qualitative is an adjective to describe an approach (as in qualitative inquiry), a type of data (as in qualitative data) or
methods (as in qualitative methods).  I think of qualitative as an approach which includes many methods.

Focus Group is a method of gathering qualitative data through the use of specific, structured interviews in the form of questions; it is also an adjective for defining the type of interviews or the type of study being conducted (Krueger & Casey, 2009, pg. 2)

Needs Assessment is method for determining priorities for the allocation of resources and actions to reduce the gap between the existing and the desired.

I’m sure there are other answers to the terms listed above; these are mine.  I’ve gotten one response (from Simon Hearn at BetterEvaluation).  If I get others, I’ll aggregate them and share them with you.  (Simon can check his answers against this post.

Now causation, and I pose another question:  If evaluation (remember the root word here is value) is determining if a program (intervention, policy, product, etc. ) made a difference, and determined the merit or worth (i.e., value) of that program (intervention, policy, product, etc.), how certain are you that your program (intervention, policy, program, etc.) caused the outcome?  Chris Lysy and Jane Davidson have developed several cartoons that address this topic.  They are worth the time to read them.

When I teach scientific writing (and all evaluators need to be able to communicate clearly verbally and in writing), I focus on the 5Cs:  larity, oherence, onciseness, onsistency, and orrectness,   I’ve written about the 5Cs in a previous blog post, so I won’t belabor them here.  Suffice it to say that when I read a document that violates one (or more) of these 5Cs, I have to wonder.

Recently, I was reading a document where the author used design (first), then method, then approach.  In reading the context, I think (not being able to clarify) that the author was referring to the same thing–a method and used these different words in an effort to make the reading more entertaining where all it did was cause obfuscation, violating larity, one of the 5Cs     .

So I’ll ask you, reader.  Are these different?  What makes them different?  Should they have been used interchangeably in the document?  I went to my favorite thesaurus of evaluation terms (Scriven)  (published by Sage) to see what he had to say, if anything.  Only “design” was listed and the definition said, “…process of stipulating the investigatory procedures to be followed in doing a certain evaluation…”  OK–investigatory procedure.

So, I’m going to list several terms used commonly in evaluation and research.  Think about what each is–design, method, approach.  I’ll provide my answers next week.  Let me know what you think each of the following is:

Case Study

Pretest-Posttest Control Group

Ethnography

Interpretive

Naturalistic

Random Control Trials (RCT)

Quasi-Experimental

Qualitative

Focus Group

Needs Assessment

“The last great earthquake to strike the Pacific Northwest occurred on January 26, 1700, at about 9 p.m. Parts of the coastline dropped three to six feet in an instant. It set off landslides throughout the Oregon Coast Range. Some of them are still moving. If you could hear soil, rocks and trees creep inch-by-inch downhill, some of those sounds would echo that massive jolt. At sea, it generated tsunamis that reshaped the Northwest coastline, traveled across the Pacific and swept through bays and coastal communities in Japan. …”

The latest issue of Terra, Oregon State University’s research magazine, delves into the ways in which OSU scientists and engineers are helping the state prepare for the next big Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake, which a growing number of researchers calculate could happen within the next 50-100 years. Learn how such a powerful near-short “megathrust” quake could affect the state and region, and what’s being done to plan for, and mitigate against, such disasters.

The spring edition also looks at how people like Oregon Sea Grant’s Tim Miller-Morgan care for the fish and other aquatic animals that make up more than 80 percent of the animals used in the university’s research labs and the public exhibits at the Hatfield Marine Science Center. The past few decades have witnessed great changes in how institutions like OSU treat the animals in their care; as Miller-Morgan puts it, ““Now we understand that we shouldn’t look at these animals as disposable. We brought them into captivity, and we have an obligation to keep them as long as we can, as close to their natural lifespan as possible — or even longer.”

Learn More

• Terra home page and archives
• Oregon Sea Grant’s earthquake and tsunami preparedness efforts
• Tim Miller-Morgan’s Aquatic Animal Health program

“The last great earthquake to strike the Pacific Northwest occurred on January 26, 1700, at about 9 p.m. Parts of the coastline dropped three to six feet in an instant. It set off landslides throughout the Oregon Coast Range. Some of them are still moving. If you could hear soil, rocks and trees creep inch-by-inch downhill, some of those sounds would echo that massive jolt. At sea, it generated tsunamis that reshaped the Northwest coastline, traveled across the Pacific and swept through bays and coastal communities in Japan. …”

The latest issue of Terra, Oregon State University’s research magazine, delves into the ways in which OSU scientists and engineers are helping the state prepare for the next big Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake, which a growing number of researchers calculate could happen within the next 50-100 years. Learn how such a powerful near-short “megathrust” quake could affect the state and region, and what’s being done to plan for, and mitigate against, such disasters.

The spring edition also looks at how people like Oregon Sea Grant’s Tim Miller-Morgan care for the fish and other aquatic animals that make up more than 80 percent of the animals used in the university’s research labs and the public exhibits at the Hatfield Marine Science Center. The past few decades have witnessed great changes in how institutions like OSU treat the animals in their care; as Miller-Morgan puts it, ““Now we understand that we shouldn’t look at these animals as disposable. We brought them into captivity, and we have an obligation to keep them as long as we can, as close to their natural lifespan as possible — or even longer.”

Learn More

• Terra home page and archives
• Oregon Sea Grant’s earthquake and tsunami preparedness efforts
• Tim Miller-Morgan’s Aquatic Animal Health program

It’s National Rip Current Awareness Week, and with the start of summer, a good time to remember that Oregon’s beautiful ocean can be a dangerous place if you don’t pay attention. Check out this short Oregon Sea Grant video about rip currents:

Beach Safety Basics: Rip Currents

• Break the Grip of the Rip – NOAA’s Rip Current Awareness page
• Dangerous Logs  – Our other short video about common Oregon beach hazards
• Three Myths About Rip Currents, from California Sea Grant

It’s National Rip Current Awareness Week, and with the start of summer, a good time to remember that Oregon’s beautiful ocean can be a dangerous place if you don’t pay attention. Check out this short Oregon Sea Grant video about rip currents:

Beach Safety Basics: Rip Currents

• Break the Grip of the Rip – NOAA’s Rip Current Awareness page
• Dangerous Logs  – Our other short video about common Oregon beach hazards
• Three Myths About Rip Currents, from California Sea Grant

For the free nitrate screening, bring 1/2 cup of untreated well water in any clean container. Screeing takes about 10 minutes when the clinic is not busy.

A groundwater educator will be on hand to answer any additional questions about further testing, wells, and septic sytems.

Sponsored by the Southern Willamette Valley Groundwater Management Area and OSU Extension Service.

Planning a visit to the Oregon coast? Tuck our “What’s Fresh and When?” flyer into your cooler so you know what kind of seafood you’re likely to find at local markets, restaurants – and on the docks.

Compiled by Oregon Sea Grant’s Newport-based fisheries specialist, Kaety Hildenbrand, the annual guide lists commercial fishing season dates for all major species caught in Oregon waters:  chinook and coho salmon, Pacific halibut, Dungeness crab, Albacore tuna, and pink shrimp – as well as a reminder that flounder, sole, rockfish and lingcod are available throughout the year.

Fishermen in Newport and several other Oregon ports sell their catch, iced at sea, right off the boat; local seafood can also be found at fish markets and local groceries, and many coastal restaurants.

Planning a visit to the Oregon coast? Tuck our “What’s Fresh and When?” flyer into your cooler so you know what kind of seafood you’re likely to find at local markets, restaurants – and on the docks.

Compiled by Oregon Sea Grant’s Newport-based fisheries specialist, Kaety Hildenbrand, the annual guide lists commercial fishing season dates for all major species caught in Oregon waters:  chinook and coho salmon, Pacific halibut, Dungeness crab, Albacore tuna, and pink shrimp – as well as a reminder that flounder, sole, rockfish and lingcod are available throughout the year.

Fishermen in Newport and several other Oregon ports sell their catch, iced at sea, right off the boat; local seafood can also be found at fish markets and local groceries, and many coastal restaurants.

I was reminded recently about the 1992 AEA meeting in Seattle, WA.  That seems like so long ago.  The hot topic of that meeting was whether qualitative data or quantitative data were best.  At the time I was a nascent evaluator having been in the field less that 10 years and absorbed debates like this as a dry sponge does water.  It was interesting; stimulating; exciting.  It felt cutting edge.

Now 20+ years later, I wonder what all the hype was about.  Now, there can be rigor in what ever data are collected, regardless of type (numbers or words); language has been developed to look at that rigor.   (Rigor can also escape the investigator regardless of the data collected; another post, another day.)  Words are important for telling stories (and there is a wealth of information on how story can be rigorous) and numbers are important for counting (and numbers have a long history of use–Thanks Don Campbell).  Using both (that is, mixed methods) makes really good sense when conducting an evaluation in community environments, work that I’ve done for most of my career (community-based work).

I was reading another evaluation blog (ACET) and found the following bit of information that I thought I’d share as it is relevant to looking at data.  This particular post (July, 2012) was a reflection of the author. (I quote from that blog).

• § Utilizing both quantitative and qualitative data. Many of ACET’s evaluations utilize both quantitative (e.g., numerical survey items) and qualitative (e.g., open-ended survey items or interviews) data to measure outcomes. Using both types of data helps triangulate evaluation findings. I learned that when close-ended survey findings are intertwined with open-ended responses, a clearer picture of program effectiveness occurs. Using both types of data also helps to further explain the findings. For example, if 80% of group A “Strongly agreed” to question 1, their open-ended responses to question 2 may explain why they “Strongly agreed” to question 1.

Triangulation was a new (to me at least) concept in 1981 when a whole chapter was devoted to the topic in a volume dedicated to Donald Campbell, titled Scientific Inquiry and the Social Sciences.   I have no doubt that this concept was not new; Crano, the author of this chapter titled “Triangulation and Cross-Cultural Research”, has three and one half pages of references listed that support the premise put forth in the chapter.  Mainly, that using data from multiple different sources may increase the understanding of the phenomena under investigation.  That is what triangulation is all about–looking at a question from multiple points of view; bringing together the words and the numbers and then offering a defensible explanation.

I’m afraid that many beginning evaluators forget that words can support numbers and numbers can support words.

Recently, I was privileged to see the recommendations of  William (Bill) Tierney on the top education blogs.  (Tierney is the Co-director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California.)  He (among others) writes the blog, 21st scholar.  The blogs are actually the recommendation of his research assistant Daniel Almeida.  These are the recommendations:

1. Free Technology for Teachers
2. MindShift
3. Joanne Jacobs
4. Teaching Tolerance
5. Brian McCall’s Economics of Education Blog

What criteria were used?  What criteria would you use?  Some criteria that come to mind are interest, readability, length, frequency.  But I’m assuming that they would be your criteria (and you know what assuming does…)

If I’ve learned anything in my years as an evaluator, it is to make assumptions explicit.  Everyone comes to the table with built in biases (called cognitive biases).  I call them personal and situational biases (I did my dissertation on those biases). So by making your assumptions explicit (and thereby avoiding personal and situational biases), you are building a rubric because a rubric is developed from criteria for a particular product, program, policy, etc.

How would you build your rubric? Many rubrics are in chart format, that is columns and rows with the criteria detailed in those cross boxes.  That isn’t cast in stone.  Given the different ways people view the world–linear, circular, webbed–there may be others, I would set yours up in the format that works best for you.  The only thing to keep in mind is be specific.

Now, perhaps you are wondering how this relates to evaluation in the way I’ve been using evaluation.  Keep in mind evaluation is an everyday activity.  And everyday, all day, you perform evaluations.  Rubrics formalizes the evaluations you conduct–by making the criteria explicit.  Sometimes you internalize them; sometimes you write them down.  If you need to remember what you did the last time you were in a similar situation, I would suggest you write them down.  No, you won’t end up with lots of little sticky notes posted all over.  Use your computer.  Create a file.  Develop criteria that are important to you.  Typically, the criteria are in a table format; an x by x form.  If you are assigning number, you might want to have the rows be the numbers (for example, 1-10) and the columns be words that describe those numbers (for example, 1 boring; 10 stimulating and engaging).  Rubrics are used in reviewing manuscripts, student papers, assigning grades to activities as well as programs.  Your format might look like this:

Or it might not.  What other configuration have you seen rubrics?  How would you develop your rubric?  Or would you–perhaps you prefer a bunch of sticky notes.  Let me know.

Last week, we kicked off our Master Woodland Manager training in northwest Oregon. Over the next six months the class will explore many aspects of small woodlands management and the trainees will come away with a better understanding of their own lands as well as a foundation from which to assist others.

We started out with a field tour where we investigated the environmental factors that influence forest growth on a given site. In particular, we wanted to see how variations in climate, topography and soil shape species composition, forest productivity, and management opportunities.

We went to five different sites, at various elevations and topographic positions from the uplands to the Valley floor. Despite the sites all being within a four-mile radius, we saw striking differences in the vegetation. The uppermost site supported a fast-growing stand of Douglas-fir and red alder. Further along, we came upon a rocky, south-facing site dominated by madrone and some not-as-fast-growing Douglas-fir; but this was just a few hundred yards from another site where the madrone were gone. Calculating the site index revealed that the Douglas-fir here were growing faster.

As we traveled down the watershed, the steep slopes along an upland creek supported alder and western redcedar. But on the flats further down the watershed, at our last stop on the Valley floor, the dominant species were Oregon white oak, Oregon ash, and valley ponderosa pine; the Douglas-fir at this last stop looked like they had caught a bad case of the crud.

Prior to the field tour, we spent some time learning how to find information about soils. The Web Soil Survey is a really handy tool for identifying soil types and learning about their properties. Using the Web Soil Survey, we mapped out our field sites and found some possible clues to our site differences. According to our soils map, the madrone were growing on a gravelly Saum soil, whereas the taller firs down the road were on the more productive Jory soil.

A recently formed gully at the latter site gave us the opportunity to see the soil profile which revealed a deep silty clay loam.

Recently I’ve discovered SoilWeb, which has become one of my favorite natural resources-related mobile apps, available for both the iPhone and Android. Using your phone’s GPS capability, SoilWeb accesses the soil data from the Web Soil Survey for the soil right underneath your feet. That is, assuming A) that you are in a place where you can get a phone signal and B) that the soil maps accurately reflect the soil on your site. As we learned on our field trip, soil types as mapped often contain unmapped pockets of other soils.  The SoilWeb app doesn’t give you everything you can find on Web Soil Survey, but you can quickly ascertain the soil texture as well as the expected depth, drainage, and other important features.

The takeaway from our tour was that what’s growing on your forest can be a clue to your site’s underlying environmental influences, and vice-versa. The growing number of applications such as SoilWeb makes it easier to be a site “sleuth”, finding those clues and piecing together the puzzle.

Amy Grotta

The shells of oysters – a commercially important shellfish whose reproduction and growth is threatened by climate-linked ocean acidification – may help counteract the effects of increased local acidity levels, according to a new study of New England’s Chesapeake Bay by a team of researchers led by Oregon State University’s George Waldbusser.

The study, published in the journal Ecology and reported this week in the New York Times , concludes that the buildup of old shells in undisturbed oyster beds – along with the oysters’ waste – can help restore alkalinity to waters that might otherwise be too acid for the shellfish to survive.

Like ocean waters around the world, the Chesapeake has become more and more acidic as a result of rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Now, by studying oyster populations in relation to acidity levels,Waldbusser’s team has concluded that oysters — particularly their shells — can play a significant role in reducing that acidity.

“Oyster shells are made out of calcium carbonate, so they’re sort of like an antacid pill,” said Waldbusser, an assistant professor of earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences at OSU and an author of the study. “In an undisturbed oyster reef, healthy oysters are generating a lot of biodeposits,” a genteel term for excrement, “which helps generate CO2 to help break down those shells, which helps to regenerate the alkalinity back into the environment.”

Ocean acidification is of great concern to commercial oyster growers. Additional  research by Waldbusser and colleague Burke Hales, conducted at an Oregon oyster hatchery, has shown that increasing acidity near commercial shellfish operations inhibits the larval oysters from developing shells and growing at a pace that makes oyster farming economically viable.

Waldbusser is also working on a Sea Grant-funded project to develop Web-based tools that would allow oyster growers and resource managers to better understand how acidification affects larval oysters so they can more effectively adapt, mitigate and adjust their operations to increase oyster survival and growth.

Learn more:

• Read the OSU news release
• Learn about Waldbusser’s current Sea Grant-supported research

The shells of oysters – a commercially important shellfish whose reproduction and growth is threatened by climate-linked ocean acidification – may help counteract the effects of increased local acidity levels, according to a new study of New England’s Chesapeake Bay by a team of researchers led by Oregon State University’s George Waldbusser.

The study, published in the journal Ecology and reported this week in the New York Times , concludes that the buildup of old shells in undisturbed oyster beds – along with the oysters’ waste – can help restore alkalinity to waters that might otherwise be too acid for the shellfish to survive.

Like ocean waters around the world, the Chesapeake has become more and more acidic as a result of rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Now, by studying oyster populations in relation to acidity levels,Waldbusser’s team has concluded that oysters — particularly their shells — can play a significant role in reducing that acidity.

“Oyster shells are made out of calcium carbonate, so they’re sort of like an antacid pill,” said Waldbusser, an assistant professor of earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences at OSU and an author of the study. “In an undisturbed oyster reef, healthy oysters are generating a lot of biodeposits,” a genteel term for excrement, “which helps generate CO2 to help break down those shells, which helps to regenerate the alkalinity back into the environment.”

Ocean acidification is of great concern to commercial oyster growers. Additional  research by Waldbusser and colleague Burke Hales, conducted at an Oregon oyster hatchery, has shown that increasing acidity near commercial shellfish operations inhibits the larval oysters from developing shells and growing at a pace that makes oyster farming economically viable.

Waldbusser is also working on a Sea Grant-funded project to develop Web-based tools that would allow oyster growers and resource managers to better understand how acidification affects larval oysters so they can more effectively adapt, mitigate and adjust their operations to increase oyster survival and growth.

Learn more:

• Read the OSU news release
• Learn about Waldbusser’s current Sea Grant-supported research

Ever wonder where the 0.05 probability level number was derived?  Ever wonder if that is the best number?  How many of you were taught in your introduction to statistics course that 0.05 is the probability level necessary for rejecting the null hypothesis of no difference?  This confidence may be spurious.  As Paul Bakker indicates in the AEA 365 blog post for March 28, “Before you analyze your data, discuss with your clients and the relevant decision makers the level of confidence they need to make a decision.”  Do they really need to be 95% confident?  Or would 90% confidence be sufficient?  What about 75% or even 55%?

Think about it for a minute?  If you were a brain surgeon, you wouldn’t want anything less than 99.99% confidence;  if you were looking at level of risk for a stock market investment, 55% would probably make you a lot of money.  The academic community  has held to and used the probability level of 0.05 for years (the computation of the p value dating back to 1770).   (Quoting Wikipedia, ” In the 1770s Laplace considered the statistics of almost half a million births. The statistics showed an excess of boys compared to girls. He concluded by calculation of a p-value that the excess was a real, but unexplained, effect.”) Fisher first proposed the 0.05 level in 1025 and established a one in 20 limit for statistical significance when considering a two tailed test.   Sometimes the academic community makes the probability level even more restrictive by using 0.01 or 0.001 to demonstrate that the findings are significant.  Scientific journals expect 95% confidence or a probability level of at least 0.05.

Although I have held to these levels, especially when I publish a manuscript, I have often wondered if this level makes sense.  If I am only curious about a difference, do I need 0.05?  Oor could I use 0.10 or 0.15 or even 0.20?  I have often asked students if they are conducting confirmatory or exploratory research?  I think confirmatory research expects a more stringent probability level.  I think exploratory research requires a less stringent probability level.  The 0.05 seems so arbitrary.

Then there is the grounded theory approach which doesn’t use a probability level.  It generates theory from categories which are generated from concepts which are identified from data, usually qualitative in nature.  It uses language like fit, relevance, workability, and modifiability.  It does not report statistically significant probabilities as it doesn’t use inferential statistics.  Instead, it uses a series of probability statements about the relationships between concepts.

So what do we do?  What do you do?  Let me know.