statcheck
is a free, open source R package that can be used to
automatically extract statistical null-hypothesis significant testing
(NHST) results from articles and recompute the p-values based on the
reported test statistic and degrees of freedom to detect possible
inconsistencies.
statcheck
is mainly useful for:
- Self-checks: you can use
statcheck
to make sure your manuscript doesn’t contain copy-paste errors or other inconsistencies before you submit it to a journal. - Peer review: editors and reviewers can use
statcheck
to check submitted manuscripts for statistical inconsistencies. They can ask authors for a correction or clarification before publishing a manuscript. - Research:
statcheck
can be used to automatically extract statistical test results from articles that can then be analyzed. You can for instance investigate whether you can predict statistical inconsistencies (see e.g., Nuijten et al., 2017), or use it to analyze p-value distributions (see e.g., Hartgerink et al., 2016).
The algorithm behind statcheck
consists of four basic steps:
- Convert pdf and html articles to plain text files.
- Search the text for instances of NHST results. Specifically,
statcheck
can recognize t-tests, F-tests, correlations, z-tests,-tests, and Q-tests (from meta-analyses) if they are reported completely (test statistic, degrees of freedom, and p-value) and in APA style.
- Recompute the p-value using the reported test statistic and degrees of freedom.
- Compare the reported and recomputed p-value. If the reported
p-value does not match the computed one, the result is marked as
an inconsistency (
Error
in the output). If the reported p-value is significant and the computed is not, or vice versa, the result is marked as a gross inconsistency (DecisionError
in the output).
statcheck
takes into account correct rounding of the test statistic,
and has the option to take into account one-tailed testing. See the
manual for details.
For detailed information about installing and using statcheck
, see the
manual on RPubs.
statcheck.io is a web-based interface for statcheck.