Question

calculate an independent t-test and describe the results.

You are a researcher examining student success at Kern County colleges and universities. You noticed that majority of students in Kern County are not performing as well as the students in Los Angeles County and San Luis Obispo County. Therefore, you decided to research factors that influence student success. One factor repeated in several literatures is a support system. Previous literature indicated that students who have a support system that values education will perform better in higher education than students who do not have a support system that values education. You decided to assess the support system of students in Kern County. Your independent variable is “support system.” You have two levels for your support system “students with a support system that values education” and “students without a support system that values education.” Your dependent variable that you are measuring is “college success.” You are measuring college success by assessing the student’s GPA. You interview 80 students with and without support systems and measured their GPAs. You obtained 41 student participants with a support system and 39 students without a support system. With the results obtained from the data, you will be able to generalize from the sample of 41 Kern County colleges and universities students to the population of all students in Kern County colleges and universities. Here is the GPA data that you obtained:

Students with Support System that Values Education
4
3.9
3.8
3.7
3.5
3.2
3
4
3.8
3.7
3.6
3.1
3.2
3.8
3.7
3.9
3.9
3.7
3.7
3.6
3.5
3.1
3.3
3.3
3.2
3.5
3.4
3.1
2.9
3
2.9
3.3
3.4
3.6
3.4
3.5
3.6
3.8
3.1
4
3.8

Students without Support System that Values Education
3.8
3.7
2.9
2.8
2.6
2.4
3
3.4
2.6
2.5
2.3
2.1
2
3
3.1
2.7
2.5
2.4
2.4
3.1
3.2
3.6
3.9
4
2.1
2.5
2.6
2.4
2.7
3.4
3.2
3.1
3.8
3.7
2.4
2.1
2.6
2.8
2.7

Answer 1

Let sample 1 (x1): Students with Support System that Values Education

sample 2 (x2): Students without Support System that Values Education

Hypotheses are:

Following is the output of independent sample t test generated by excel:

The test statistics is

t = 6.12

The p-value is

p-value = 0.0000

Since p-value is approximately zero so we reject the null hypothesis. There is evidence to conclude that  students who have a support system that values education will perform better in higher education than students who do not have a support system that values education.