Statistical significance is a measure of how reliably a finding represents the population or real-world condition of interest. However, the word “significance” can be misleading. It can lead to the assumption that what is statistically significant is important or meaningful. In fact, many findings that are statistically significant are not really significant in any way that we would care about.
In 6sense research, when we encounter findings that are statistically significant but not important, we describe them as “not meaningful.” For instance, in our research of B2B buying processes we found that buyers reliably consume vendor content (e.g., website content, webinars) more than they read analysts reports, but only by 4%. This is an example in which we found a “statistically significant” finding that is not very meaningful.
