false negative

Categories: Site glossary

a real effect which is not recognised as a positive outcome on statistical testing because it is not so unlikely to occur by chance to be excluded as a chance event

The occurrence of false negatives can be reduced by using a less restricitive confidence level as a criterion of significance (e.g., p <0.25) but this increases the frequency of false positives

Author: Keith

Former school and college science teacher, teacher educator, research supervisor, and research methods lecturer. Emeritus Professor of Science Education at the University of Cambridge.