Question

dentify the appropriate statistical test for each research description:

1. Single-sample z-test

2. Single-samplet-test

3. Independent samples t-test

4. Related samples t-test (repeated measures or matched samples)

5. Correlation

An office manager wants to know if there’s a gender difference in punctuality. Over the period of one month, he records the number of days that each employee is late, to see if there’s a difference between male and female employees.

Answer 1

Answer is independent samples t test.

Independent samples t test is used to test if there is significant difference in the mean of two populations and samples are drawn independently of each other.

In the above example manager wants to know if punctuality varies across gender . Punctuality is measured in terms of number days when person is late. Therefore it is variable data. So we can see if there is any difference in punctuality between male and female using independent sample t test .

Why not to use dependent sample t test ?

Because data is not dependent ( obvious) . I will give example of dependent data

manager wants to see if there is difference in punctuality of employees in January and February , then he will collect data for same employee in month of February and in month of January . Say employee 1 is late 3 times in month of January and late 2 times in month of February . Here data values X= 3 and y= 2 corresponds to same employee. Therefore this is example of dependent sample t test.

There is no question of using single sample tests as there are two samples. One for male and other for female.