Unpublished Paper
Needed in Empirical Social Science: Numbers
(2022)
Abstract
Knowing the magnitude and standard error of an empirical estimate is much
more important than simply knowing the estimate’s sign and whether it is statistically
significant. Yet, we find that even in top journals, when empirical social
scientists choose their headline results—the results they put in abstracts—the vast
majority ignore this teaching and report neither the magnitude nor the precision of
their findings. They provide no numerical headline results for 63%±3% of empirical
economics papers and for a whopping 92% ± 1% of empirical political science or
sociology papers between 1999 and 2019. Moreover, they essentially never report
precision (0.1% ± 0.1%) in headline results. Many social scientists appear wedded
to a null hypothesis testing culture instead of an estimation culture. There is another
way: medical researchers routinely report numerical magnitudes (98%±1%)
and precision (83% ± 2%) in headline results. Trends suggest that economists,
but not political scientists or sociologists, are warming to numerical reporting: the
share of empirical economics articles with numerical headline results doubled since
1999, and economics articles with numerical headline results get more citations
(+19% ± 11%).
Disciplines
Publication Date
Summer July 11, 2022
Citation Information
Aaron Edlin. "Needed in Empirical Social Science: Numbers" (2022) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/aaron_edlin/123/