IOP2601/MO001/4/2016

LEARNING UNIT 15: Power

The concept of power is becoming increasingly important in research. More and more authors
of scientific articles explain the power of their research. For this reason you have to
understand what the concept means and be able to interpret power (as it is done, for
example, in scientific articles).
The basic concept of power
Suppose you are researching the effect of smoking on the health of employees in a building.
You use two samples in your study: a department in which nobody smokes and another
department in which many of the employees are smokers. Your null hypothesis states that
there is no difference between the health of non-smokers in the two departments. Your
results show that you cannot reject the null hypothesis; hence there is no difference between
the health of non-smokers in the two departments. On the basis of your findings the
organisation does not introduce a non-smoking policy. You publish your findings in a scientific
article. Five years later a professor who specialises in your kind of research reads the article
and discovers that you have made a statistical error. This means that your findings were
wrong and you should have rejected the null hypothesis, implying that there is a difference
between the health of non-smokers in the two departments.
If you think of the New Stars competition where the prizes have a high monetary value, the
organisers have to ensure that the results and the basis on which the decisions are made are
unquestionable. Working from a quantitative perspective, ensuring sufficient power would be
one way of being able to defend decisions made.

15.1
1.

Consider the scenario described above, and then answer the following questions:
1.1 What kind of statistical error did you make? Explain your answer.
1.2 The mistaken non-rejection of the null hypothesis had implications for the
organisation and its staff. Mention some of these implications.

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2.

To internalise the basic concept of power you should study the section on
Error and statistical tests on pages 231 to 232 in Tredoux and Durrheim (2013). This
section will also help you to understand Type I and Type II errors better.

1.

This scenario indicates the importance of the correct rejection of the false null
hypothesis.
1.1

In learning unit 11 you learnt what a type II error, also written as (beta), means.
If you go through the section on Error and statistical tests on pages 231 to 232
in Tredoux and Durrheim (2013) you will see that it relates closely to the concept
of power.

1.2

Implications that come to mind include the following:

x
x
x

2.

time and money that you wasted on the experiment

lost productivity because of absenteeism of employees who fall sick as a
result of smoking
medical funds overloaded with claims of sick employees

You should pay special attention to the interpretation of figure 13.1 on pages 233 to 234
in Tredoux and Durrheim (2013).

It should be clear by now that non-rejection of the null hypothesis when there actually is a
difference between groups has enormous implications in most research situations. That is
why the concept of power is so important. The probability of deciding correctly to reject a false
null hypothesis (H0) is known as power; the notation is 1.

Interpretation of a power value

The power of a t-test for related and independent samples can be computed, but it is a
complicated process. We do not expect you to be able to do the computations, but you must
be able to interpret the power value obtained from them. Tredoux and Durrheim (2013)
explain the interpretation of a power value by using the criminal court analogy as part of their
introduction on pages 230 to 231.
As you see, we merely require you to study pages 230 to 234 in Tredoux and Durrheim
(2013). The rest of the chapter is not applicable to you.

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15.2
1.
2.
3.

1.
2.

3.

Revise the rules for rejection or nonrejection of the null hypothesis. You will find them in
learning unit 11.
Explain what is meant by power =0,6.
What level of certainty would one require of the statistical process for the voting
outcomes in New Stars to be beyond question?

These rules are useful to help you understand the concept of power.
When we say that the power of a piece of research is 0,6, it means that if the null
hypothesis is false to the extent that we expect that it must be false, there is a
probability of 0,6 that the results will cause us to reject the null hypothesis. The greater
the power of an experiment, the higher the probability that we will reject the false null
hypothesis and the more powerful the experiment is.
0,8

An area for the application of power

Industrial psychology is one of many sciences that use of meta-analysis. This is a statistical
method that is used to combine the findings of different research projects. Meta-analysis is
used mainly in scientific articles dealing with research in a specific area (Aron & Aron, 1994).
Having completed learning unit 15 you should be able to

define the concept of power and know why it is important

interpret a computed power value.

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New Stars the singing competition starts

As was explained when the New Stars show was launched ten contestants had to undergo
a three-week apprenticeship programme wherein they had to participate in various
preparation activities while being voted for by viewers to stay in the competition.
The New Stars apprenticeship programme has come to an end on a high note last week! It
was such a gruelling process that organisers are somewhat worried that contestants might
not be up to competing in the singing competition as well! The full image makeover has been
the most favourite part of the apprenticeship programme for the contestants and the viewers
alike! Contrary to all expectations, Vuyo K did not make it to this final round! The five
contestants chosen to take part in the singing competition are David, Tshepo, Shelly, Kerry
and Cameron. According to their profiles presented in learning unit 1, who do you think is
most likely to win?

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