Increasingly "fed up" the concepts of "'power,' 'type 1 error,' and 'type 2 error,' because all these are defined in terms of statistical significance," Andrew Gelman (Columbia--Statistics) developed and advanced "Type S (Sign) and Type M (Magnitude) Errors." Gelman, conceding that "concepts of Type S and Type M errors are not perfect," nonetheless concludes they represent a helpful "step forward." Gelman (with John Carlin) described his thinking in a 2014 paper, Beyond Power Calculations: Assessing Type S (Sign) and Type M (Magnitude) Errors. As well, the paper is summarized in a more recent blog post (here).
While few are ready to completely jettison more traditional power testing, Gelman and Carlin's alternative "Type S and Type M" struck many as a useful complement. Additional evidence of the possible promise of "Type S" and "Type M" tests is found in the recent release of Daniel Klein's user-written Stata command add-on, entitled rdesigni. (For some background on the new rdesigni command click here for a recent list-serv discussion.)
Those already equipped with Stata and wanting to explore this new command need only execute to following commend (with Stata launched):
ssc install rdesigni
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