Statistical significance is a measure of how reliably a study’s findings represent the real world. It is literally a statement of the probability that a study finding represents the real world. For survey research, the standard for determining statistical significance is that we would expect to find the same result 95% of the time we replicate the survey with a sample drawn from the same population.
The word “significant” is often taken to mean “important” or “large” in everyday conversation, but there are many cases in which findings that are statistically significant are not meaningful, large, or important. In describing our findings, 6sense Research uses the word “reliable” instead of “significant,” because we think it is a more accurate description of this concept.
