Question

1. A researcher conducted a study to determine differences in reading ability between children who began Kindergarten at the required age of 5 years old (“on time”) compared to students who were eligible to have started school, but were held back at home for another year (“red-shirted”), by parental choice, and began Kindergarten at age 6. The research tested the Kindergarten children of both groups on reading ability in one school in the district. Respond to the following questions related to this study.
   1. Write the null hypothesis (in words or using symbols) for this study: [3 Points]

2. What can you say about the Levene’s test for homogeneity of variance if the p-value associated with this test is greater than 0.05?                                           [3 Points]

3. What are some aspects of this study that could be improved (e.g., sampling technique for selecting students, matching, sample size, and target population) and why?                                                                                                                          [4 Points]

Answer 1

Ans.1)

The null hypothesis is

Ho: The average reading ability of the children in the two groups do not differ significantly

In symbols,

Ans.2)

Levene's test checks the hypothesis of equality of variances.

If p- value > 0.05, the null hypothesis is accepted at 5% significance level and it is concluded that the variances of the groups are equal.

Ans.3)

1. The target population is the set of all the children in kindergarten in the place where the research is being conducted. Therefore, the researcher can take samples from more than one school. This will help in determining the effect specific schools might be having on the children.

2. Stratified proportional sampling should be used. The two starta being the two groups of children in the population.

3. The sample size can be determined by considering the population variance and the degree of accuracy required.

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