A survey of the statistical power of research in behavioral ecology and animal behavior

By Michael D. Jennions, A. Møller. 2003

257 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c2929825f9d4dba1cf5855f9d573122657cc809d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecological Modeling

In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

Citations in the corpus

“Positive” Results Increase Down the Hierarchy of the Sciences (2010, background): “Statistical power -which is primarily a function of noise in the data and sample size- is typically low in social, behavioural and biological papers [49,50,51,52,53], and relatively high in disciplines like physics, chemistry or geology.”
Peahens do not prefer peacocks with more elaborate trains (2008, methodology): “On the other hand, we avoided the problem of small effect size due to a small number of observations (Møller & Jennions 2001; Jennions & Møller 2003) by conducting a 7-year survey; we then obtained the ‘least’ effect size from the longest observation with the largest sample size among peafowl…”
Reporting animal research: Explanation and Elaboration for the ARRIVE guidelines 2019 (2019, background): “Second, although several systemic inflammatory conditions have disturbances in the innate immune system as important features, and some of these again specifically encompassing distorted TLR9 signalling [34], sustained TLR9 stimulation does not necessarily represent a clinically relevant inflammator”
A farewell to Bonferroni: the problems of low statistical power and publication bias (2004, methodology): “Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, United Kingdom Recently, Jennions and Møller (2003) carried out a metaanalysis on statistical power in the field of behavioral ecology and animal behavior, reviewing 10 leading journals including Behavioral Ecology.”
Male-male interference competition decreases spawning rate in the European bitterling (Rhodeus sericeus) (2004, methodology): “We calculated a post-hoc power analysis for tests where the P value was slightly larger then our alpha level for significance, as recommended by Jennions and Moller (2003) (but see Hoenig and Heisey 2001).”
Reporting animal research: Explanation and elaboration for the ARRIVE guidelines 2.0 (2020, background): “, overpowered studies) raise ethical issues over unnecessary use of animals and may produce trivial findings that are statistically significant but not biologically relevant [35].”
Male mating history and female fecundity in the Lepidoptera: do male virgins make better partners? (2005, background): “It may also be the case that the effect of male mating history on female fecundity is modest and that many studies that report no significant relationship do so because of small sample sizes and low statistical power (Jennions and Møller 2003).”
Moving beyond noninformative priors: why and how to choose weakly informative priors in Bayesian analyses (2019, background): “This is an explicit acknowledgment that most ecological effects are small (Møller and Jennions 2002, Jennions and Møller 2003) and that unrealistically large effects in the data should be constrained unless supported by high statistical power (i.e. large sample sizes, low noise).”
Short-term effects of data-loggers on Cory’s shearwater (Calonectris diomedea) (2005, methodology): “Following Jennions and Møller (2003), we estimated the power for each test according to the effect size, w, a standardised measure of the magnitude of the effect assumed.”
Do Pressures to Publish Increase Scientists' Bias? An Empirical Support from US States Data (2010, background): “But negative results are virtually inevitable, unless all the hypotheses tested were true, experiments were designed and conducted perfectly, and the statistical power available were always 100% – which it rarely is, and is usually much lower [42,43,44,45,46].”
Vitamin E supplementation enhances growth and condition of nestling barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) (2006, background): “…it was shown that studies in the field of behavioral ecology are characterized by extremely low power of the statistical tests, resulting in increased probability of incorrectly accepting the null hypothesis when it is false, i.e., of incurring type II statistical errors (Jennions and Møller 2003).”
The ARRIVE guidelines 2.0: Updated guidelines for reporting animal research* (2020, background): “, overpowered studies) raise ethical issues over unnecessary use of animals and may produce trivial findings that are statistically significant but not biologically relevant [35].”
How do caring parents respond to mate loss? Differential response by males and females (2005, background): “Jennions & Moller 2003 explicitly exclude repeated measures).”