Schunn, C. D. (1999). Statistical significance bars (SSB): A way to make graphs more interpretable. Unpublished manuscript.

While line and bar graphs are a very common medium for presenting data in psychology, currently they rarely present information that the reader would like to know: which means are statistically significant from one another. I have developed a new kind of error bar, statistical significance bars (SSBs), that allows the reader to more directly and easily infer whether any two means in the graph are statistical significant from one another. This method works for both with and between subjects designs and is based directly upon standard statistical tests that the authors would normally use for pairwise means comparisons.

• Download Microsoft Excel 98/97 file, including:

• Studentized Range table
• Example of how to compute an SSB
• Example of how to create a graph using an SSB

• Paper describing SSBs in html format

• Download paper describing SSBs in RTF format.

Last updated: 3/4/99

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