Question4 If the alpha level is given as a p-value then which p-value is the most common threshold used for decision making in health sciences research ?Select one alternative: 0.05 0.005 0.5 5.0 Reset

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Question: If the alpha level is given as a p-value then which p-value is the most common threshold used for decision making in health sciences research? Choose one option from: 0.05, 0.005, 0.5, 5.0.
Option 1: 0.05
This value is the conventional threshold in many health sciences studies. It represents a 5% risk of rejecting the null hypothesis when it is actually true (Type I error) and has become a standard benchmark due to historical usage and balance between sensitivity and specificity in many clinical studies.
Option 2: 0.005
While more stringent thresholds like 0.005 are used in certain contexts or in contexts demanding stronger evidence (for example, some large-scale or preventive medicine studies), this is not the most common threshold across the broader health sciences literature. It’s typically chosen for specific, high-stakes situations or to reduce false positives, not as the default.
Option 3: 0.5
This value indicates a 50% chance of a Type I error, which is far too lenient for hypothesis testing in health sciences. Such a high alpha would almost guarantee a large rate of false positives and would undermine the credibility of results, so it is not used as the standard threshold.
Option 4: 5.0
Interpreting 5.0 as a p-value would be inconsistent with how p-values are defined (they range from 0 to 1). A threshold of 5.0 would be illogical in a standard statistical framework and is not used in practice.
Now, consider the intent of an alpha threshold: it sets the cutoff for declaring statistical significance while controlling the rate of false positives. Among the given choices, 0.05 stands out as the most common default used in a wide array of health sciences research, reflecting the conventional 5% significance level accepted in many journals and regulatory guidelines. The other options either represent impossibilities within the p-value scale (5.0), are excessively lax (0.5) or are used only in more specialized or stringent research contexts (0.005) rather than as the universal standard.
Therefore, the most frequently adopted threshold in general health sciences research is 0.05.

Question4 If the alpha level is given as a p-value then which p-value is the most common threshold used for decision making in health sciences research ?Select one alternative: 0.05 0.005 0.5 5.0 Reset

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