2015 - Volume 2 Issue 1

ISSN 2161-542X (Print)                               
eISSN 2161-5411 (Online)

• Table of Contents
• Editorial Board
• Call for Papers

Editorial Articles

Insignificant or Nonsignificant?How to Tell the Difference

Samantha L. Russell

Statistical significance testing is a useful research tool in many fields; however, the meaning of the word significance is interpreted differently among researchers and laymen alike. Accordingly, statistical significance is one of the hardest concepts to grasp. Statistical fallacies exist in the thought that statistical significance means that the results are automatically important and that non-significant results implies no importance or insignificance. Learning how to interpret significance tests and understanding that non-significant findings are not a sign of failure are key to breaking the bad research habits that have forced an emphasis in significant findings.

The Significance of Insignificance

Ted Cross

There is a quiet storm rumbling across academia. Every so often it pops up in the papers or journals, but it largely goes unnoticed. It’s a problem of publishing– not of a decrease in article volume, or of the conversion from tradition journals to web-based versions– but of academic publication quality. In a rash of recent reports, journals have had to retract dozens of articles after discovering that findings were faked or misrepresented (Rice, 2013; Swaine, 2014). In other cases, even in the hard sciences, seminal articles that produced provocative results have been found to be irreproducible (Lehrer, 2010). This, of course, is problematic, considering academic publishing and its associated peer review process is an established, trusted, time-honored screening mechanism for quality knowledge creation. Yet, the question at hand really is not how big the problem is or which fields it affects the most, but rather, why we should have such a problem in the first place? One could argue that rooted at the core of the academic publishing crisis is a systematic pressure to publish at an increased rate while simultaneously only publishing “significant” findings—significant not in the popular connotation of findings that have value to the academic community, but statistically significant findings that may, or may not, provide intellectual value to the issue at hand.

Scholarly Articles

A Comparison of the Spirituality and Religiosity of Physician Hospitalists and Other Physician Specialties

Brian W. Jones, Jeffrey Alexander, Denice C. Curtis, Reverend Larry Easterling

The importance of spirituality in the delivery of health care has received growing acceptance by health practitioners. Hospitalists have emerged as a growing force in the delivery of care in the hospital setting. The purpose of the present study was to compare the religiosity/spirituality of hospitalist physicians to other physician specialties to assess whether their intrinsic religiosity was greater or less than other physician specialties. Fifty-three hospitalists were surveyed electronically and results were compared with a previously conducted nationwide physician survey on religiosity and spirituality. Using binomial nonparametric testing, no significant difference was found between the religiosity/spirituality of hospitalists and physicians from all other medical specialties. However, the intrinsic religiosity between both groups falls below that of the general population suggesting hospitalists place less reliance upon spirituality and religion than do the patients to whom they provide care. The findings suggest more research is warranted on the spirituality of hospitalists in the acute care setting.

The Impact of Online Voter Registration on Youth Voter Turnout

Kari Lorentson

Online teaching is in its adolescence and needs to mature in order to overcome some of its growing pains to reach its potential in the field of education. Reflecting upon the author's first three years teaching online, he notes practices and commitments that could help instructors better participate in and facilitate lifelong learning for students. To overcome challenges of online education, such as physical isolation and a sense of disconnectedness, instructors must develop creative and personalized strategies to meet students' needs. The author offers personalized reflections to guide online pedagogy/andragogy, foster dialogue and encourage enhanced student learning in the online classroom. Essentially, teaching in the online classroom involves establishing and developing principles of support and communication that could result in the understanding and application of information.