Question

Just tell me we will use two Sample independent test or the two sample dependent test.

An experiment was carried out to compare recall ability when reading electronically compared to hard copy. Thirty students from a first-year university English class agreed to participate. Each student was shown a randomly generated list of 40 five-letter words on a tablet and given 2 minutes to memorise them. They were then given 4 minutes to write down as many of the words as they could recall. An hour later, the students repeated the experiment but this time the list of 40 five-letter words was given to them on a piece of paper. In each case, the percentage of correctly recalled words was recorded. The aim is to see if there is a difference in the percentage of words correctly recalled between the electronic list and the paper list.

Answer 1

In this case We will use two sample dependent test because two readings are taken for the same 30 people in this study.

Note that we use a two sample dependent test when measures are taken for the same subjects while an independent two sample test is done when measures are taken on different subject or entity which are independent of each other.

Example: a study involving performance of group of student before and after taking a prep course is a dependent two sample test because the same student is taking test two times -one before the course and one after the course.

Similarly, here also we are taking two observations one after showing the words on tablet and another after showing them on a hard copy. And both of these observations are taken on the same student so these two observations are dependent as they are being taken on the same subject(or student here).

That's why we will use a two sample dependent test.