Christabel Ekechukwu

Psych3002Fall2015
Week 4 Assignment 1
09/23/2015
Scenario:
Imagine you are a researcher who believes that a relaxation technique involving
visualization will help people with mild insomnia fall asleep faster. You randomly select a
sample of 20 participants from a population of mild insomnia patients and randomly
assign 10 to receive visualization therapy. The other 10 participants receive no treatment.
You then measure how long (in minutes) it takes participants to fall asleep. Your data are
below. The numbers represent the number of minutes each participant took to fall asleep.
No Treatment (X1)
Treatment (X2)
22
19
18
17
27
24
20
21
23
27
26
21
27
23
22
18
24
19
22
22

Assignment:
To complete this Assignment, submit by Day 7 a response to each of the following:
Explain whether you chose to use an independent-samples t test or a matchedsamples ttest. Provide a rationale for your choice.
I use independent sample t test as the data is not paired here. In fact the two variables
X1 and X2 denoting No treatment and Treatment are independent of each other.
Identify the independent and dependent variables.
Dependent variable is time to fall asleep. And independent variable is treatment.
Knowing you believe the treatment will reduce the amount of time to fall asleep, state the
null and alternate hypotheses in words (not formulas).
Null Hypothesis, Ho: there is no significant difference in the time to fall asleep when
treatment and no treatment is given.
Alternative Hypothesis, H1: The time to fall asleep when treatment is less as compared
to when no treatment is given.
"Type I or II errors, per se - they just happen - they are mistakes. The most frustrating
thing about these errors is that we never know when they have occurred. We just go along
thinking we retained a true null or rejected a false one, none the wiser. That is why it is so
important for researchers to replicate results multiple times before believing results as
true(Bjorkman)."
Explain whether you would use a one-tailed or two-tailed test and why.
One tailed test is used here as I want to test that treatment reduces the sleeping time.

 Explain whether you have homogeneity of variance, and explain how you know. Explain
why it is important to know if you have homogeneity of variance.
I use Levene's test to test for homogeneity of variances. Null Hypothesis, Ho: there is
no significant difference between the variances of two groups (Treatment and No
treatment). Versus alternative Hypothesis, Ho: there is significant difference between
the variances of two groups (Treatment and No treatment).
P-value = 1.00. Since, p-value is greater than alpha (0.05), I fail to reject Ho at 5% level
of significance and conclude that there is no significant difference between the
variances of two groups (Treatment and No treatment). And hence decide to proceed
with independent sample t test with equal variances.
Identify the obtained t value for this data set using SPSS.
T value = 1.492
Identify the degrees of freedom and explain how you determined it.
Degree of freedom = n1+n2-2 = 10+10-2 = 18
Identify the p value.
p-value = 0.153
Explain whether you should retain or reject the null hypothesis and why.
Since p-value is less than alpha (0.05), I reject Ho at 5% level of significance and
conclude that the time to fall asleep when treatment is less as compared to when no
treatment is given.
Explain what you can conclude about the effectiveness of visualization therapy.
I can say that visualization therapy is effective.
SPSS Output

Group Statistics
group
Observation

Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean

no_treatment 10 23.10

2.961

.936

treatment

3.035

.960

10 21.10

Independent Samples Test

Levene's Test

t-test for Equality of Means

for Equality of
Variances
F

Sig.

df

Sig. (2-

Mean

Std. Error

95% Confidence

tailed)

Difference

Difference

Interval of the
Difference
Lower

Observation Equal
variances
assumed

.000

1.000 1.492

18

.153

2.000

1.341

-.817

Upper
4.817

Equal
variances
not

1.492 17.989

.153

2.000

1.341

-.817

assumed

References:
Heiman, G. (N.D.). Basic Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences.
L. Lehmann, E., & P. Romano, J. (N.D.). Testing Statistical Hypotheses (Third ed.).
Bjorkman, Stacy. Presentation and Analysis of Stattistics (2015)

4.817