Whose Prior is it Anyway? A Note on 'Rigorous Large-Scale Educational RCTs are Often Uninformative'

Simpson, A.

Abstract

A recent paper uses Bayes factors to argue a large minority of rigorous, large-scale education RCTs are ‘uninformative’. The definition of ‘uninformative’ depends on the authors’ hypothesis choices for calculating Bayes factors. These arguably over-adjust for effect size inflation and involve a fixed prior distribution, disregarding the trials’ varied intentions.

Citation

Simpson, A. (2019). Whose Prior is it Anyway? A Note on 'Rigorous Large-Scale Educational RCTs are Often Uninformative'. Educational Researcher, 48(6), 382-384. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x19855076

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 14, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Jul 12, 2019
• Publication Date: Aug 31, 2019
• Deposit Date: May 16, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: May 16, 2019
• Journal: Educational Researcher
• Print ISSN: 0013-189X
• Electronic ISSN: 1935-102X
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 48
• Issue: 6
• Pages: 382-384
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x19855076
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1296366