A Method for Analysis of Habitat Selection Data: Bailey’s Interval

This paper calculated the Bonferroni interval and Bailey’s interval of four sets published data in order to show comparative dominance of Bailey’s method in the study of “use-available” model on habitat selection of animals. Bailey’s method deduced differently on two sets aforesaid data compared to Bonferroni method, one dataset of which couldn’t show whether the animals made habitat selection or not in Bonferroni method’s judgment. Nevertheless Bailey’s method detected the variance. Cherry (1996) pointed out that the Bonferroni method of interval construction is based on a large sample approximation for a confidence interval for a single binomial proportion with the overall confidence level controlled with the Bonferroni inequality. This method will lead to a logically wrong deduction because of lacking coherence and consonance for small samples. As an alternative, Bailey's method calculates correctly with the use of a continuous correcting factor to overcome the above-mentioned limitation, furthermore a Chi-square goodness-of-fit test is undesired. We recommended Bailey’s method in analyzing data of habitat selection. We also suggested that researchers should properly increase the sample size meanwhile decrease the number of type of habitats to control Type I and Type II errors.

Keywords
Habitat selection Statistical inference Bonferroni interval Bailey’s interval