Seeing Beyond 'Significance': There is More to Your Results Than 'p<0.05'

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Open Conversations: Ideas in Practice

Seeing Beyond 'Significance': There is More to Your Results Than 'p<0.05

Date: 8 September 2026
Time: 4:00 – 5:00PM (Malaysia Time – GMT+8) 
Mode: Online 
Registration Link: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/asuMzsgGmH
 

"Quantitative researchers commonly evaluate their results by noting whether they are “statistically significant”. When the data do not come from a random sample (or, when the data do not constitute a sample at all), this procedure cannot sensibly be used."

David Bartram, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Leicester and Editor-in-Chief of Social Indicators Research, will argue that statistical significance does not tell us what matters. Where data do not come from a random sample, or do not constitute a sample at all, the procedure cannot sensibly be applied. Even with a random sample, the coefficients carry more important information. He will demonstrate this through an extended example in which attention to coefficients yields conclusions that stand in tension with, and improve on, those drawn from p-values. 

Participants will leave with a clearer basis for judging quantitative claims: what a coefficient reveals that a significance test conceals, when significance testing does not apply, and how to read results where the convention has been used without warrant.

The session will be beneficial to researchers, analysts, and evaluators working with quantitative data. It will also interest those who commission, review, or act on quantitative evidence in policy and business settings, where the significance threshold often stands in as an unexamined proxy for whether a finding counts. 

About the Speaker

David Bartram is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Leicester. He is Editor-in-Chief of Social Indicators Research and Vice-President of the International Society for Quality of Life Studies (ISQOLS). He has published two books: Key Concepts in Migration (SAGE, with Maritsa Poros and Pierre Monforte) and International Labor Migration: Foreign Workers and Public Policy (Palgrave). He holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a BA from Kenyon College. 

About Open Conversations

Open Conversations, hosted by the Sunway Institute for Global Strategy and Competitiveness, convenes researchers, practitioners, policymakers, industry leaders, and community members to explore contemporary topics through informed discussion and exchange of ideas — fostering collaboration across disciplines and sectors, bridging research and practice.