A short introduction into Bayesian evaluation of informative hypotheses as an alternative to exploratory comparisons of multiple group means

Abstract

This paper presents an introduction into Bayesian evaluation of informative hypotheses, that is, hypotheses representing explicit expectations about multiple group means (Hoijtink, 2011; Hoijtink, Klugkist & Boelen, 2008). The authors begin by discussing some limits of exploratory methods before presenting a non-technical overview of the Bayesian approach. References are provided for the technical details. A particular effort is made to illustrate the method with an example from psychology. References to software, more elaborate textbooks and tutorials enable researchers to apply this novel method to their own data.