Independent Sample

T-Test
CEIT 421

Introduction
Think about each case ?
A social psychologist may want to compare men and
women in terms of their political attitudes.
An educational psychologist may want to compare two
methods for teaching mathematics.
A clinical psychologist may want to evaluate a therapy
technique by comparing depression scores for patients
before therapy with their score after therapy.
NOT: in each case, the research question concerns a
mean difference between two sets of data.

Introduction
T-test is a research design that uses a separate group of
participants for each treatment condition (involving two
separate samples).
It is also called an independent-measures research
design or a between-subjects research design.

Note:The Independent SamplestTest can only

compare the means for two (and only two) groups. It
cannot make comparisons among more than two
groups. If you wish to compare the means across more
than two groups, you will likely want to run an ANOVA.

Introduction
Two general Research Designs:
1- Two sets of data could come from two completely
separate groups of participants (see case 1 and 2)
2- Two sets of data could come from the same group of
participants (see Case 3)
The Independent Samples t Test is commonly used to test the
following:
Statistical differences between the means of two groups
Statistical differences between the means of two interventions
Statistical differences between the means of two change scores

Types of Variable

Continuous
Variables
vs
The variables used in this test are known as:
Categorical Variables

Dependent Variable
Independent Variable
Interval

&
Two groups

Ratio
---

---

Dependent variable must be

continuous

Independent variable must be

categorical

Introduction

Research Design 1: Two sets of data from the separate

groups
Population A
Taught by method A

Population B
Taught by method B

Research Question:
Unknown
=?

Unknown
=?

Samp
le A

Samp
le B

Do the achievement
scores for children
taught by method A
differ from the scores
for children taught by
method B.

Introduction
Research Design 2: Two sets of data from the same group
Population A

Unknown
=?

Samp
le A

Pre-test
achievement score

Post-test
achievement score

Samp
le A

Samp
le A

intervention
Taught by method A

One set of data

The other set of data

Research Question:
Do children's pre-test achievement scores differ from
their post-test scores after taught by method A.

The t Statistic for an Independent

Measures
Research
Design
The Hypothesis
for an
Independent Measures
Test

The goal of T-test is to compare the means of two independent groups in

order to determine whether there is statistical evidence that the associated
population means are significantly different.
The mean for the first population is 1
The mean for the second population is 2
The null hypothesis
equal")

H0: 1= 2("the two population means are

The alternative hypothesis

equal")

H1: 1 2("the two population means are not

The t Statistic for an Independent

Measures
Research
Design
Assumptions
underlying
the independent
-measures

There are three assumptions that should be satisfied before you use the
independent measures for hypothesis testing:
1. The observations within each sample must be independent
2. The two populations from which the sample are selected must be
normal
3. The two populations from which the samples are selected must have
equal variance.

Note: The third assumption is rather important,

especially when there is a large discrepancy (difference)
between the sample sizes.

Assumptions underlying the independent

-measures
Levene's Test for Equality of Variance

The independent samples T test requires the assumption of homogeneity

of variance -- i.e., both groups must have the same variance.
SPSS conveniently includes a test for the homogeneity of variance, called
Levene's Test.
The hypotheses for Levenes test are:
H0: 12- 22= 0 ("the population variances of group 1 and 2 are equal")
H1: 12- 22 0 ("the population variances of group 1 and 2 are not equal")
This implies that if we reject the null hypothesis of Levene's Test, it suggests
that the variances of the two groups are not equal; i.e., that the homogeneity
of variances assumption is violated.

Example
Research question: Are males different from females in terms of writing scores?
Variables:
1-) Gender (2 groups) - Categorical - independent
2-) Writing Scores Continuous - dependent
The mean for males is 1
The mean for females is 2
Hypotheses:
The 'null hypothesis' might be:
H0: 1= 2 There is no significant difference between writing scores of males and females.
The 'alternative hypothesis' might be:
H1: 1 2 There is a significant difference between writing scores of males and females.

Example
1- Open IBM Statistics software
2- Go to Analyze > Compare Means and click on Independent Sample T-Test

Example
3- Drag dependent variable from left box to right box by using the middlecentered icon

Example
4- Drag independent variable from left box to grouping variable box
5- Click on Define Groups button and write the value given to the each group

Example
6- Then Click continue and OK
7- Two sections (boxes) appear in the output: Group Statistics and Independent
Samples Test. The first section, Group Statistics, provides basic information about the
group comparisons, including the sample size (n), mean, standard deviation, and
standard error for mile times by group. In this example, there are 99 males and 101
females. The mean for males is 50.36 with 10.36 standard deviation, and the mean for
females is 54.90 with 0.80 standard deviation.

Example
8- The second section,Independent Samples Test, displays the results most relevant to
the Independent SamplestTest. There are two parts that provide different pieces of
information: Levenes Test for Equality of Variances and t-test for Equality of Means

Example
9-Levene's Test for Equality of of Variances: This section has the test results for
Levene's Test. From left to right:
Fis the test statistic of Levene's test
Sig.is the p-value corresponding to this test statistic.
Thep-value of Levene's test is printed as ".000" (but should be read asp< 0.05 -i.e.,pvery small), so we reject the null of Levene's test and conclude that the
variance of males writing scores is significantly different than that of females.This
tells us that we should look at the "Equal variances not assumed" second
row for the t-test results. (If this test result had not been significant -- that is, if we
had observedp>-- then we would have used the "Equal variances assumed"
output.)

Example
10- t-test for Equality of Meansprovides the results for the actual
Independent SamplestTest. From left to right:
tis the computed test statistic
dfis the degrees of freedom
Sig (2-tailed)is the p-value corresponding to the given test statistic and
degrees of freedom

Example
11-The sign of the mean difference corresponds to the sign of thetvalue. The
negativetvalue in this example indicates that the mean of females writing
scores is significantly greater than the mean of males writing scores (look at
group statistics table for bigger and lower mean score).
The associated p value is printed as ".001". Since p value is less than our chosen
significance level = 0.05 (p<0.05), we can reject the null hypothesis, and
conclude that mean writing scores of females and males is significantly different.

Example
9- Interpret the results
Table is
prepared
based on
the APA
style

Independent sample t-test was conducted to examine the difference between writing
scores of males and females. Results, as shown in Table X, indicated that writing scores
of females (M:54.90, SD:8.01) are significantly different from that of males (M:50.60,
SD:10.37) (t184.38= -3.27,p< .05). It can be concluded that females are better than
males on writing.

Nothing lasts forever