The Social Construction of Significance: A Critical Evaluation of the use of the p-Value in Social Research

In this short essay, I will evaluate and deconstruct the p value statistically and philosophically. I will interrogate the social construction of the p value within social research: examining how the statistic is not as rigorous and capable of demarcating science from pseudoscience as many previously thought. Secondly, I will use the p value to assess the philosophical underpinnings of the scientific method within social science, and will argue that a move away from the p value constitutes the development of a progressive research programme from a Lakatosian perspective (Lakatos, 1978). To conclude, I will argue that such evaluations of method are fundamental to scientific practice, and this controversy is evidence for psychology’s self-aware and ethical scientific method, which many other disciplines can, and should, incorporate into their own work.