Psych 248 - Lab 7 Worksheet: More Hypothesis Testing using t-tests

Name__________________________________________

1. Independent Measures t
Researchers have reported that elderly people who own pets are less likely to visit the doctor after
upsetting events than those who do not own pets. A researcher compares a sample of elderly pet owners
to a group that does not own pets but is otherwise matched for age and income. The data that are recorded
(see below) are number of visits to the doctor in the course of a year. We would like to determine if these
data support the previous findings.
Pet owner : 9 0 3 3 4 3 5 2 11 5 Non-owner: 11 5 10 7 5 4 9 6 13 9 5 8
What is the (quasi-) independent variable? _____________________
What is the dependent variable? _____________________
State the Null Hypothesis:. ___________________________________________________________________ .
. ___________________________________________________________________________________________
State the Alternative Hypothesis:. ____________________________________________________________
. ___________________________________________________________________________________________
Create an SPSS data file. You may code owner status as 1 (=owner) and 0 (=non-owner). Perform an
independent measures t-test by selecting Analyze>Compare Means> Independent Samples t-test. Select
visits as the test variable and owner as the grouping variable. You will then need to define the groups.
Group 1 has value 1 (i.e., owner) and Group 2 has value 0 (non-owner). Next, click Continue to return to
the dialog box, then click OK to run the analysis. Fill in the following from the output table “Group
Statistics.”
Pet owners Non-owners
Means of visits: ________________ _____________
Std. Deviation _______________ _____________
Std. Error of Mean _______________ _____________

Before we look at the results of the t-test, let’s plot the means and confidence intervals. Select Graphs>
Error bar>Simple (Summaries for groups of Cases). Next, click Define. Put the visits variable in the
Variable box and the owner variable in the Category Axis box. Under Bars Represent, select Confidence
interval for mean and enter 95% for Level. Now click OK to produce a graph with the mean for each
group plotted and bars extending out a distance that represents the 95% confidence interval for each group
mean. Describe the graph in terms of the amount of overlap of the bars (i.e., is it complete overlap or
only partial).. __________________________________

Now, let’s return to the t-test table. What conclusion should be reached concerning equality of variances, based on
Levene’s test?

If the outcome of Levene’s test is not significant, use the first row of the “Independent Samples Test”
table, otherwise use the second row. From the appropriate row, fill in:
Mean Difference = ______________ Std. Error of Difference = _____________
t =_______________ df =_____________
Sig. (2-tailed) p = ________ 95% Confidence Interval: _____ to ______

Write a sentence describing the results of the statistical test using APA style.
. ___________________________________________________________________________________________
. ___________________________________________________________________________________________
Describe what the 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference means in this example.
. ___________________________________________________________________________________________
2. Repeated Measures t
For a complete description see: http://onlinestatbook.com/case_studies_rvls/guns/index.html

The "weapons effect" is the finding that the presence of a weapon, or even a picture of a weapon, can
cause people to behave more aggressively. The weapons effect is now a well-established phenomenon.
One explanation of this effect is that because guns have been associated with aggression, seeing a gun
increases the speed of accessing associated aggressive thoughts.

If this true, then the presence of a weapon word (such as "dagger" or "bullet") should increase the
accessibility of an aggressive word (such as "destroy" or "wound"). The accessibility of a word can be
measured by the time it takes to name a word presented on a computer screen. The current data are from
Anderson, Benjamin, and Bartholow (1998), Psychological Science, 9, 308-314.

The hypothesis is that a person can name an aggressive word more quickly if it is preceded by a weapon
word than if it word is preceded by a neutral word. Each subject named both aggressive and non-
aggressive words following both weapon and non-weapon "primes."

The design was a 2 (prime type: weapon vs. non-weapon) x 2 (target type: aggressive vs. non-aggressive)
within-subjects factorial design. Each subject was given 48 trials in each of the four conditions. The mean
within each condition was used as the dependent variable. Each subject has four scores but only two will
be used for this analysis – AW – aggressive words after weapon; AN – aggressive words after neutral.

Load the data which are stored in the SPSS file aggress.sav. (on the K drive, under Data, PSYCH248)
The first variable is the subject number. The coding for sex is 1=female and 2=male. The aw variable
represents each subject’s mean time (in milliseconds) to pronounce aggressive words when preceded by
weapon primes, and an is the subject’s mean time to pronounce aggressive words preceded by non-
weapon primes. {Variables cw and cn will not be used here but are the times to pronounce the non-
aggressive words when preceded by weapon and non-weapon primes, respectively.}

What is the independent variable? ________________________________

What is the dependent variable? _________________________________
State the Null Hypothesis: _________________________________
State the Alternative Hypothesis : _________________________________

To test the experimenters’ hypothesis, perform a related samples t-test by selecting

Analyze>Compare Means>Paired-Samples T Test and choosing aw and an as paired variables. Click OK
to run the analysis. From the “Paired Samples Statistics” table in the Output, fill in the following:
Mean of aw ______________ Mean of an ______________
From the "Paired Samples Test" table, fill in:
Mean difference = ______________ t = ____________
Std Error = ______________ df = ______________
Sig. or p level ______________ 95% Confidence Interval: from _________ to ______

With alpha at 0.05 level, what conclusion should you reach about the Null Hypothesis?

________________________________________________________________

Write a sentence describing the results of the statistical test using APA style.