Uses of uncertain statistical power: Designing future studies, not evaluating completed studies.

Abstract

tatistical power is a topic of intense interest as part of proposed methodological reforms to improve the defensibility of psychological findings. Power has been used in disparate ways-some that follow and some that do not follow from definitional features of statistical power. We introduce a taxonomy on three uses of power (comparing the performance of different procedures, designing or planning studies, and evaluating completed studies) in the context of new developments that consider uncertainty due to sampling variability. This review first describes fundamental concepts underlying power, new quantitative developments in power analysis, and the application of power analysis in designing studies. To facilitate the pedagogy of using power for design, we provide web applications to illustrate these concepts and examples of power analysis using newly developed methods. We also describe why using power for evaluating completed studies can be counterproductive. We conclude with a discussion of future directions in quantitative research on power analysis and provide recommendations for applying power in substantive research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).