Statistical Power and the Testing of Null Hypotheses: A Review of Contemporary Management Research and Recommendations for Future Studies

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine how well contemporary management research fares on the issue of statistical power with regard to studies specifically predicting null relationships between phenomena of interest. This power assessment differs from traditional power studies because it focuses solely on studies that offered and tested null hypotheses. A sample of studies containing hypothesized null relationships was taken from five mainstream management journals over the 1990 to 1999 time period. Results of the power assessment suggest that management researchers’ abilities to affirm null hypotheses are low. On average, the power assessment revealed that for those studies that found nonsignificance of results and consequently affirmed their null hypotheses, the actual Type II error rate was nearly 15 times greater than what is advocated in the literature when failing to reject a false null hypothesis. Recommendations for researchers proposing and testing formal null hypotheses are also discussed