Reproducibility of statistical data, academic publications and policy implications: Evidence from Ghana

Abstract

This paper examines the accuracy, validity and presentation of statistical evidence and also assesses the implications of irreproducibility associated with variations in sample size for academic research work and policy-making. The 2012/13 Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS), 10 academic publications and the Free Senior High School policy in Ghana are used to address the objectives of the paper. The data show that about 20 per cent of the tables in the Main Report of the GLSS Six is irreproducible, 10 per cent of the tables have outcomes worth re-examining, and in terms of completeness in the presentation of statistical evidence, only 3 out of the 27 sampled tables report the sample size that was used. Again, nine out of the 10 academic publications use half of the original sample size, two-fifths of the publications do not report the sample size for the descriptive statistics, a couple of the papers show varying sample size between the descriptive statistics and the regression analysis. Keywords: Reproducibility, Sample Size, Comprehensiveness, Statistical Data and Ghana