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Research Question - Is there a difference in how often males and females wear a seatbelt when riding in
a car with someone else?
Note - For illustration purposes of this assignment, I will use an ordinal DV for the independent sample ttest, even though technically this test requires an interval or ratio dependent variable. Therefore, please
note that I will be using an ordinal variable for the DV for illustration purposes only. Typically we have 1
categorical independent variable with two levels and one dependent continuous variable.
Null hypothesis - There is no statistically significant difference in how often males and females wear a
seatbelt when riding in a car with someone else.
Independent Variable: Sex (2 groups: Male and Female) nominal variable
Dependent Variable: How often do you wear a seatbelt when riding in a car with someone else? (Q10)
Ordinal variable (illustration purposes ONLY)
Analysis - The independent samples t-test is appropriate for comparing the means between two
different (or independent) groups. Here we are comparing the mean how often do you wear a seatbelt
when riding in a car with someone else between two independent groups (males and females). The IV
is gender and DV is how often do you wear a seatbelt when riding in a car with someone else, lets refer
to it as wear seatbelt.
Step-By-Step and Interpretation The null hypothesis is that there is no difference between the two
groups and the research hypothesis is that there is a statistically significant difference. CLICK ANALYZE
COMPARE MEANS INDEPENDENT SAMPLES T-TEST. Now, you have an open dialogue box. The
grouping variable is the dichotomous variable which is gender. The testing variable which is usually an
interval/ratio/dependent variable, but for purposes of this example is an ordinal variable which is how
often do you wear a seatbelt when riding in a car with someone else (Q10). Select the variable of
interest which is gender in the left-hand list and use the arrow to move it to GROUPING VARIABLE. Next,
CLICK DEFINE GROUP button. This will help you communicate with SPSS what the IV stand for. The
DEFINE GROUP dialogue box opens. SPSS wants to know what number represents the first group and
what number represents the second group. Type 1, for Group 1 and Type 2 for Group 2. CLICK
CONTINUE.
with a DF (degree of freedom) 2272.906, and the associated p-value is .000. This p-value is less than .05.
Therefore, we would reject the null hypothesis that there is no difference between the means and
accept and conclude that, there is a statistically significant difference between males and females in
their reports of how often they wear a seatbelt when in the car with someone else. The mean difference
(blue triangle) determines the difference in means. For purposes of this example, it would be male
reports minus female reports. Note that, (orange box) the sig 2-tailed (p-value) is the same for the top
and bottom row because (gold box) the standard deviations, or variances are close. This explains why
the two p-values are the same (orange box). SPSS also provides the mean difference (red triangle)
between the two means (orange circle) which is the mean difference between 1.93 and 1.84 which
provided the mean difference. The standard error (green triangle) associated with the mean difference
is .013. SPSS also provides the 95% confidence intervals (black box) which tells us the difference
between the means.