The use of statistical methods in library and information science
Abstract
This study compared the use of statistics in 99 journals from four subject areas: library and information science, education, social work, and business. It was found that journals in library and information science produced more articles making no use of statistics than did journals in the other three subject areas, and that only in library and information science were there more articles using descriptive techniques only than articles using inferential techniques. A comparison of the mean number of articles per journal using no statistics, descriptive statistics only, and inferential statistics indicated that the mean number of articles per journal using inferential statistics was much lower for library and information science than for the other subject areas. The only inferential technique not used significantly less in library and information science than in the other subject areas was correlation, one of the simplest of inferential techniques.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The use of inferential statistics in the library science literature is increasing.
“Given the continued pressure on libraries to quantitavely demonstrate their value and contribution to students' learning outcomes, and the increasing use of inferential statistics in the library science literature (Wallace 1985; Zhang, Wang, and Zhao 2017; Zhang et al. 2018)”
From Unethical Numbers? A Meta-analysis of Library Learning Analytics Studies (2019) · cites this paper as Wallace 1985
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Unethical Numbers? A Meta-analysis of Library Learning Analytics Studies
Robertshaw, M. B., & Asher, A. (2019) · Library Trends · doi:10.1353/lib.2019.0031 · Cited by 32 · see citing works
- Authors
- Wallace, D. P.
- Affiliations
- Louisiana State University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Wallace, Danny P.
- Venue
- Journal of the American Society for Information Science
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 1985-11
- Volume
- 36
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 402-410
- ISSN
- 0002-8231 (ISSN-L)
- 1097-4571
- OpenAlex
- W2070000903
- Cited by
- 27
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2023: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 1 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 1 · 2014: 1 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 1.49
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of the American Society for Information Science (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › Library Science and Information Literacy
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Library Science and Information
- Keywords
- statistical analysis, library and information science journals, descriptive statistics, statistical inference, correlation
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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