PSY 202 Spring 2015 / nci Ayhan

One Way Independent (Between-Subjects) ANOVA

When to use?
When I have a continuous dependent variable (measured at least at an interval or ratio level), and a single
independent variable with 3 or more levels.
What ANOVA is?
ANOVA is a way of comparing the ratio of systematic variance to unsystematic variance in an experimental
study.
Is ANOVA a test of variances, then?
No. The analysis contrasts means by examining the sources of variation in the data but the ANOVA does
allow the researcher to conclude whether the group means come from identical or different populations.
The sources of error in the between subjects ANOVA design?
When the group means are very different, there is a greater degree of variation between the group means >>
this is your between group variation. One source of variation you are particularly interested in within this
group is the treatment effect >> the variability in your data caused by your experimental manipulation. This
is assumed to introduce systematic bias if it exists.
BUT irrespective of whether there is a treatment effect, would you expect every person within a given group
to obtain the exact same score? >> No. In fact, this is your sampling error. You expect sampling error to
introduce random noise across different experimental conditions.
As well as the sampling error, measurement devices would also give some error in their readings. Or, the
instructions given to subjects might also slightly vary, which all introduce some experimental error. We
hope this error to be random, too. If not, then, it means we have a confound.
The ANOVA, then, partitions the sources of variation in an experiment into between-group variation and
within-group variation:
i.e:

F test is the ratio between these two measures of variation:

What are my null and alternative hypotheses?

You have only one null and one alternative hypotheses for one-way ANOVA:

What assumptions to check?

-

Homogeneity of variance: Variances in the groups are equal.

>> This assumption can be tested using Levenes test, which tests the null hypothesis that variances
in the groups are equal. If its significant (p value smaller than 0.05), then its problematic! It means
variances are different.

The violation of the homogeneity of variance assumption becomes particularly problematic when the sample
size in each group are different.
In such cases, what to do if Levene test comes out to be significant: SPSS offers two corrected versions of
the F called Brown-Forsythe F and Welchs F which you could rely upon.
-

Normally distributed population distributions: Each sample is drawn from a population that is
normally distributed

How to check normality?

1. P-p plots: You could use p-p plots >> probability probability plots to check for normality
>> plots cumulative probability of a variable against cumulative probability of a normal distribution
>>if the distribution is normal, youd get a nice straight diagonal line
>> If the data points are S shaped, youve got problem with skewness

Different types of p-p plots you could obtain

2. Kolmogorov-Smirnov & Shapiro-Wilks Tests: Compare the scores in the sample to a normally
distributed set of scores with the same mean and standard deviation.
>> We want these tests to be statistically non-significant: Which tells that the distribution of the
sample is not statistically different from a normal distribution.
BUT if you have small samples please do NOT use these as a measure of normality as they
would lack power to detect violations of assumptions.
If the distributions are not normal, is it the end of the world? NO. As long as the group sizes are equal
across conditions and that you have reasonable sample size, ANOVA is robust to the violations of the

normality assumption. BUT if the group sizes differ, the accuracy of F is affected by skew and nonnormality and affects the power of F in some unpredictable ways.
In such cases, you might employ a transformation which could be used to correct for non-normality and
unequality of variances. Transforming the Y values to remedy nonnormality often results in correcting
heteroscedasticity (unequal variances). Occasionally, both the X and Y variables are transformed.
Last source of solution would be to apply Kruskal-Wallis Test (which is a non-parametric test)
-

Independent observations: Each observation within a group is assumed to be independent of all other
observations.

Violations of the assumptions of independence are very serious. If observations across groups are
correlated, then the Type I error is substantially inflated.
What Post Hoc Tests Are?
The F ratio tells us only whether the model fitted to the data accounts for more variation than extranous
factors, but it doesnt tell us where the differences between groups lie.
SO a statistically significant F value means >> one or more of the differences between means are
statistically significant BUT which groups differ?
One easy solution that comes to mind is to make pairwise t-tests for all pairs BUT this would inflate Type I
error: When we have completed running a set of comparisons among our group means, we will arrive at a
set (often called a family) of conclusions. For example the family might consist of the statements:

The probability that this family of conclusions will contain at least one Type I error is called the familywise
error rate (FWER)
SO
We need a way to compare means without inflating the probability of making Type I error:
i.e. comparing every group as if conducting several t-tests but to use a stricter acceptance criterion such that
the familywise error rate does not rise above 0.05. This is exactly what post hoc tests do.

REF: I heavily relied upon Discovering Statistics Using SPSS by Andy Field

A Working Example
(REF: Dr Esra Mungans Lecture Notes)
Suppose you have a moderately difficult Sudoku puzzle and you are interested in whether, and if so, how
much, the level of background noise will affect your subjects speed in solving the puzzle. Your data is
listed below:
Table - Duration (in min) to solve a moderately difficult Sudoku puzzle as a function of background noise
silent
5
3
1

low noise
6
6
3

strong noise
10
5
6

a) Write your hypotheses and assumptions.

b) Construct your ANOVA table and fill it.
c) Write down your FCR value.
d) Calculate your Fobs value and draw your conclusion.
e) Calculate your effect size.
f) Calculate the critical difference for an overall alpha level of .05, that is, CD .05 of the Tukey HSD test.
Take q = 4.34.
g) Looking at your data posthoc, are there any differences between groups that appear significant?
h) Construct a 95% confidence interval estimation for the difference between silent and strong
noise conditions.

Solutions to be given