Not significant: What now?

In a classic significance test,based on a random sample with size n,a p value will be calculated at size n aiming to reject the null hypothesis. the sample size n,however,can retrospectively be divided into partial samples (1,2,3,...,n - 2,n - 1,n) and a test of significance can be calculated for each partial sample. as a result,several partial samples will provide significant p values whereas others will not show significant p values. in this paper,we propose a significance test that takes into account the additional information from the p values of the n - 1 partial samples of a random sample. we show that the n - 1 p values can greatly modify the results of a classic significance test. © 2012 gerhard marinell et al.