In response to the concerns White raises in his technical comment on Rickles, Heppen, Allensworth, Sorensen, and Walters (2018), we discuss whether it would have been appropriate to test for nominally equivalent outcomes, given that the study was initially conceived and designed to test for significant differences, and that the conclusion of no difference was not solely based on a null hypothesis test. To further support the article’s conclusion, confidence intervals for the null hypothesis tests and a test of equivalence are provided.
BarkerL. E.LumanE. T.McCauleyM. M.ChuS. Y. (2002). Assessing equivalence: An alternative to the use of difference tests for measuring disparities in vaccination coverage. American Journal of Epidemiology, 156(11), 1056–1061. doi:10.1093/aje/kwf149
HeppenJ. B.SorensenN.AllensworthE.WaltersK.RicklesJ.TaylorS. S.MichelmanV. (2017). The struggle to pass algebra: Online vs. face-to-face credit recovery for at-risk urban students. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 10(2), 272–296. doi:10.1080/19345747.2016.1168500
4.
RicklesJ.HeppenJ. B.AllensworthE.SorensenN.WaltersK. (2018). Online credit recovery and the path to on-time high school graduation. Educational Researcher, 47(8), 481–491.
5.
WassersteinR. L.LazarN. A. (2016). The ASA’s statement on p-values: Context, process, and purpose. The American Statistician, 70(2), 129–133.
