Statistical Tests A review of the outline of a typical research paper reveals the fundamental purpose of statistical analysis. Present results descriptive statistics significance tests Discussion and conclusions Statistical analysis offers a systematic way of describing results and determining their reliability. Descriptive statistics are used to summarize the results using means, standard deviations, frequencies and other methods which describe the central tendency and variability of the data.
Significance tests state the probability that the results are due to chance.
Significance the scientific community agrees on conventions, such as a p-value of less than .05 is significant, in order to provide a systematic approach to the interpretation of results.