Finding statistics that communicate: how do people understand confidence intervals?

Submission note: A thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the School of Psychological Science, Faculty of Science, Technology and Engineering, La Trobe University, Bundoora.

Statistics can be challenging to learn and interpret for many students. The recent guidelines by the American Psychological Association (APA) encourage estimation-based thinking and use of confidence intervals (CIs). But how do people think about and understand CIs? What information do people draw from a CI? What do they ignore? If they have misconceptions, to what extent can we reduce CI misconceptions? This general introduction will present the theoretical framework for my thesis. I will begin by describing CIs and my motivation for investigating them. I will introduce the concept of subjective likelihood distributions. Finally, I will give a chapter by chapter summary of the thesis.