Applications of inferential statistical methods in library and information science

Abstract

Research methods play an extremely important role in studies. Statistical methods are fundamental and vital for quantitative research. The authors of this paper investigated the research papers that used statistical methods including parametric inferential statistical methods, nonparametric inferential statistical methods, predictive statistical correlation methods, and predictive statistical regression methods in library and information science and examined the connections and interactions between statistical methods and their application areas including information creation, information selection and control, information organization, information retrieval, information dissemination, and information use. Both an inferential statistical method and graphic clustering visualization method were employed to explore the relationships between statistical methods and application areas and reveal the hidden interaction patterns. As a result, 1821 research papers employing statistical methods were identified among the papers published in six major library and information science journals from 1999 to 2017. The findings showed that application areas affected the types of statistical methods utilized. Studies in information organization and information retrieval tended to employ parametric and nonparametric inferential methods, while correlation and regression methods were applied more in studies in information use, information dissemination, information creation, and information selection and control field. These findings help researchers better understand the statistical method orientation of library and information science studies and assist educators in the field to develop applicable quantitative research methodology courses.

Statistical Methods in Human Resource Research: Dearth or Diversity? Evidence from Published Literature

“…They reported t -test, chi-square, ANOVA as the most frequently used statistics. In a related study the same authors Zhang et al (2018) found significant relationship between statistical methods and application areas of studies performed. Kaur and Fink (2016) argue that advanced technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence are at experimental stage in HRM.…”

“…Medical field has robust and diversity of studies (Arnald et al, 2013;Nieminen et al, 2018) investigating the statistical models used in this field. Information and library science has a good number of studies (Zhang et al, 2016(Zhang et al, , 2018 exploring the use of statistics in the field. Statistical analyses can broadly be broken into two categories: confirmatory (CDA) and exploratory analysis (EDA).…”

Research methodology practices among postgraduate Information Studies students in Tanzania

“…In terms of data analysis, the literature shows LIS scholars apply statistical methods in research (Ngulube, 2005b;Zhang et al, 2018); however, generally students have little knowledge on applying mathematical and statistical knowledge in research methodology (Daniel et al, 2018). In fact, in the last three decades, descriptive statistics has been predominantly used relative to inferential statistics (Ngulube, 2005b;Ullah and Ameen, 2018).…”

Statistical analysis used in LIS research produced by Pakistani authors

“…Majority of the papers did not define hypotheses (80%), did not clearly state a significance level (80%), did not provide a complete set of statistical results (50%) and did not mention explicitly the statistical method (50%). Zhang et al. (2018) found that parametric inferential statistical methods were the most used methods 1,023 (34%) while the regression methods ( n = 377, 12%) were the least employed methods.…”

“…Inferential statistics explores differences or establishes association and causality among two or more variables. Inferential statistics can be divided into four categories including parametric, non-parametric, predictive correlation and predictive regression (Zhang et al. , 2018).…”