Educational Statistics and Computer
Application
Exploring Differences between Groups
• Another family of statistics that can be used when you want to find out
whether there is statistically significant difference among number of
groups
T-tests
• T-tests are used when you have two groups (e.g, male and female) or
two sets of data (Before and after) and you want compare mean
• There are two main types of t-tests;
1. Paired sample t-test
2. Independent sample t-test
Paired sample t-test
• When you are interested in changes in score for participant tested
• The samples are related because they are the same people tested each
time
• Paired sample t-test also called repeated measures
Independent sample t-test
• When you have two different (independent) groups of people (male
and female) and you are interested in comparing their scores
• In this case you collect information on only one occasion but from two
different sets of people
One way analysis of variance (ANOVA)
• One way analysis of variance is similar to t-test but is used when you
have two or more groups to compare mean scores
• It is called one way because you are looking at the impact of only one
independent variable on your dependent variable
• ANOVA will let you know whether your groups differ but it won’t not
tell you where the significant difference exist
• You can conduct post-hoc comparisons to find out which groups are
significantly different from one another
Similar to t-tests, there are two types of ANOVAs:
• Two way analysis of variance
• Multivariate analysis of variance
Two way analysis of variance
• Two way analysis of variables allows you to test the impact of two
independent variables on one dependent variable
For example, you could use a two-way ANOVA to understand whether
there is an interaction between gender and educational level on test
anxiety amongst university students, where gender (males/females) and
education level (undergraduate/postgraduate) are your independent
variables, and test anxiety is your dependent variable.
There are two different two way ANOVAs:
• Between groups ANOVA ( when the groups are different)
• Repeated measures ANOVA ( when same people are tested on more
then one occasion)
Some research designs combine both between groups and repeted
measures in one study and these are referred as “Mixed between Within
Designs” or “ Split Plot”.
Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA)
• Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) is used when you want
to compare your groups on number of different but related dependent
variables
For example; comparing the effects of different treatments on variety of
outcomes e.g; anxiety, happiness, depression etc.
Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA)
• Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) is used when you want to
statistically control for possible effects of additional confounding
variable (covariate)
• ANCOVA statistically removes the effect of the covariate
