The Misconceptions of Some Statistical Techniques in Research

In today’s society, statistical techniques are being used with increasing rate in education, medicine, social sciences, and applied sciences such as engineering. They are crucial in interpreting data and making decisions. Based on our experience and observation through seminars, conferences and consultations, we noticed some statistics practitioners often misuse some of the statistical techniques in their researches. The easy availability of the statistical packages such as SAS, SPSS, has driven more researchers to use the packages in analysing their data. They need not to consult the statisticians and this led to greater abuse of statistics in data analysis. Consequently, meaningless and misleading conclusions are obtained from an incorrect analysis. Due to the lack of awareness, the policy makers often rely on these results to make decisions and that means disaster to a community or to a country. Therefore, it is imperative for the researchers to be aware of using the right statistical techniques so that a valid and objective conclusion can be made. In this paper, we will draw attention to some incorrect practices on selected topics caused by the lack of awareness of the researchers. Appropriate suggestions are offered to tackle this problem