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Statistical Significance

By Julie Stachowiak, Ph.D., About.com

Updated: January 14, 2008

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Definition: Put simply, this is the likelihood that a finding or a result is caused by something other than just chance.

Usually, this is set at less than 5% probability (p< 0.05), meaning that the result is at least 95% likely to be accurate (or that this result would be produced by chance no more than 5% of the time).

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