Speaking on Data’s Behalf: What Researchers Say and How Audiences Choose:

BackgroundBayesian statistics have become popular in the social sciences, in part because they are thought to present more useful information than traditional frequentist statistics. Unfortunately, little is known about whether or how interpretations of frequentist and Bayesian results differ.ObjectivesWe test whether presenting Bayesian or frequentist results based on the same underlying data influences the decisions people made.Research designParticipants were randomly assigned to read Bayesian and frequentist interpretations of hypothetical evaluations of new education technologies of various degrees of uncertainty, ranging from posterior probabilities of 99.8% to 52.9%, which have equivalent frequentist p values of .001 and .65, respectively.SubjectsAcross three studies, 933 U.S. adults were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk.MeasuresThe primary outcome was the proportion of participants who recommended adopting the new technology. We also measured respondents’ certainty in their choice and (in Stu...