Quantitude S7E14 Sample Size Planning: The Groundhog Day Episode
21 snips
Feb 3, 2026 A lively revisit of power analysis and why sample size planning keeps coming back. They unpack a cautious strategy called Nmax to guard against unknown contextual parameters. Listeners hear about collapsing many uncertainties into a single ‘shock absorber’ and the trade offs of planning for worst-case scenarios. The conversation mixes methodology with playful asides and practical planning advice.
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Power Planning Keeps Coming Back
- Power analysis keeps reappearing as a persistent methodological problem in research practice.
- Greg Hancock and Patrick Curran frame this episode as a third revisit to power planning and its recurring pitfalls.
Choose The Smallest Meaningful Effect
- Set your focal effect to the smallest effect size that would matter in practice and defend that choice.
- Prioritize planning for meaningful effects rather than optimistic best-case estimates.
Contextual Parameters Drive Sample Size
- Sample size needs vary dramatically across plausible values of contextual parameters you don’t care about.
- Ignoring uncertainty in those contextual parameters can reduce power from .80 to near chance.
