Wilcoxon Signed

Ranks Test
Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadStudent, Ph. D. in Science Education
Trance
- Biology

FRANK WILCOXON (1892 1965)

Frank was an outstanding
chemist, whose interest in
statistics first started while
studying fungicides, when he
and colleagues studied Fishers
newly published Statistical
Methods for Research Workers.
In 1945, he published his paper
setting out the rank-sum and
signed-rank tests which are
still named after him.
Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

WHEN TO USE WILCOXON?

Use this when the same participants
perform both conditions, i.e., it is
appropriate for analyzing the data from
a repeated-measures design with two
conditions.
Use it when the data do not meet the
requirements for a parametric test (i.e.
if the data are not normally distributed;
if the variances for the two conditions
are markedly different; or if the data are
measurements on an ordinal scale.
Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

WHEN TO USE WILCOXON?

The Wilcoxon signed-ranks test can

also be used for paired data.
Where you have two unrelated
samples, which you wish to compare,
the Wilcoxon rank sum test is used;
this is very similar to the Mann
Whitney test.

Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

WHEN TO USE WILCOXON?

The assumption made for the

Wilcoxon test is that the variable
being tested is symmetrically
distributed about the median, which
would also be the mean.
Remember too that it is still vitally
important that the samples has been
randomly chosen from the population.
The Wilcoxon signed-rank test can be
used for a single sample.
Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

SAMPLE PROBLEMS USING WILCOXON SR

TEST
A survey collected information about how
much students spend when buying
presents for different people. Each
student recorded the amount they would
spend on a present for a partner and also
when buying a present for a friend of the
same sex. In evolutionary terms, we
might expect students to spend more on
the (potential) mothers/fathers of their
children than on friends of the same sex.
Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

SAMPLE PROBLEMS USING WILCOXON SR

TEST

Suppose we wanted to know if people's ability

to report words accurately was affected by
which ear they heard them in. To investigate
this, we performed a dichotic listening task.
Each participant heard a series of words,
presented randomly to either their left or right
ear, and reported the words if they could. Each
participant thus provided two scores: the
number of words that they reported correctly
from their left ear, and the number reported
correctly from their right ear. Do participants
report more words from one ear than the other?
Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

SAMPLE PROBLEMS USING WILCOXON SR

TEST
Eight patients suffering from OCD were
exposed to both a Placebo and an
Experimental treatment (at different
times). They were measured on severity
of symptoms, on a 20-point scale were 20
= highest severity. Previous research
indicates that severity of symptoms is not
normally distributed in this population.
Was there a significant difference in
severity of symptoms between the two
conditions?
Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

STEPS/PROCEDURES
1. For each item in a sample of n items,
compute a difference score, Di,
between the two paired values.
2. Neglect the + and signs and list the
set n absolute differences, |Di|.
3. Omit any absolute difference score of
zero from further analysis, thereby
yielding a set of n nonzero absolute
difference scores, where n n. n
becomes the actual sample size.
Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

STEPS/PROCEDURES
4. Assign ranks Ri from 1 to n to each of the
|Di| such that the smallest absolute
difference score gets rank 1 and the
largest gets rank n. If two or more |Di| are
equal, assign each of them the mean of
the ranks they would have been assigned
individually had ties in the data not
occurred.
5. Reassign the symbol + and to each of
the n ranks, Ri, depending on whether Di
was originally positive or negative.
Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

STEPS/PROCEDURES
6. Compute the Wilcoxon test statistic, W, as
the sum of the positive ranks.
n'

W Ri

()

i 1

For samples of n > 20, the test statistic W is

approximately normally distributed with
mean W and standard deviation W
defined as

n ' n ' 1
n ' n ' 1 2n ' 1
W
, W
.
4
24

- may also be the negative ranks, which ever is lower.

Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

STEPS/PROCEDURES
Large-Sample* Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test

Z STAT

n ' n ' 1
W
4
.
n ' n ' 1 2n ' 1
24

* - in some references , higher than 15 samples is already

considered as large sample (as in Siegel, Castellan)

Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

HYPOTHESES
The null and alternative hypotheses for
the Wilcoxon signed rank test are
Two-Tail Test

One-Tail Test

One-Tail

H o : MD = 0

H o : MD 0

H o : MD

H1: MD 0

H1: MD < 0

H1: MD >

Test

0
0

Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

TABLE (CRITICAL VALUES FOR WILCOXON

SR TEST)

Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

TABLE (CRITICAL VALUES FOR WILCOXON

SR TEST)

Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

TABLE (NORMAL CURVE)

Cumulative
Probabilities of
the Standard
Normal
Distribution

Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

EXAMPLE

Twelve adult males were put on a

liquid diet in a weight-reducing plan.
Weights were recorded before and
after the diet. The data are shown in
the table below. Determine if the
plan was successful. Use = 0.05.

Hypotheses: Ho: MD 0,
Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

H1: MD < 0.
November 2014

SOLUTION
After

Before

Di

|Di|

Ri

188
177
176
169
196
172
165
190
165
180
181
172

186
171
177
168
191
172
177
191
170
171
188
187

-2
-6
1
-1
-5
0
12
1
5
-9
7
15

2
6
1
1
5
ignore
12
1
5
9
7
15

4
7
2
2
5.5

+
-

-4
-7
2
-2
-5.5

10
2
5.5
9
8
11
66

+
+
+
+
+

10
2
5.5
-9
8
11

Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

Sign Signed Ri

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

Ri +

Ri 4
7

2
2
5.5
10
2
5.5
9
8
11

38.5 27.5
November 2014

SOLUTION
n = 12 1 = 11. Based on Table for WSR
Test,

the critical value at = 0.05 is 10 (2-tailed

test) and 13 (1-tailed test).
Since lower(38.5, 27.5) = 27.5 and is higher
than any critical value (p > 0.05), then it
is concluded that there is no significant
evidence to reject the null hypothesis.
Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

USING SPSS
1. Enter the After data values into one variable
and the Before data values into another
variable (see left figure, below). Note that the
row/case numbers correspond to the subject
numbers, as in the table above.

Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

USING SPSS
2. Select Analyze Nonparametric Tests 2
Related Samples (see right figure, above).
3. Select Weight After Diet and Weight Before
Diet together, then click the arrow button to
enter them into the Test Pair(s) List. Select
Wilcoxon as the Test Type and then click
OK. (See the figure, below.)

Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

USING SPSS
4. Your output
should look like
this.

Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

USING SPSS

Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

USING SPSS

Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

SUMMARY

The Wilcoxon test is still valid for data

from any distribution, whether Normal
or not, and is much less sensitive to
outliers than the two-sample t-test.
If one is primarily interested in
differences in location between the two
distributions, the Wilcoxon test has the
disadvantage of also reacting to other
differences between the distributions
such as differences in shape.
Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

SUMMARY

When the assumptions of the twosample t-test hold, the Wilcoxon test
is somewhat less likely to detect a
location shift than is the two-sample
t-test. However, the losses in this
regard are usually quite small.
The Mann-Whitney test is essentially
identical to the Wilcoxon test, even
though it uses a different test
statistic.
Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

REFERENCES
Accessed Date: November 2014
bbs12e_onlinetopic_ch12-8.pdf
Ch10.wilcoxon.pdf
example_wilcoxon.pdf
M12_BERE8380_12_SE_C12.8.qxd. 2/21/11. 3:45 PM.
SPSS.PairedWilcoxonTests.pdf
SPSS_SignedRankTest.pdf
SPSS.WilcoxonTests.pdf
StatSheet10_WilcoxonT.pdf
v2appendixc.pdf
WilcoxonTable2005.pdf
Siegel, S. & Castellan, N. (1956, 1988, 1989). Nonparametric
Statistics for Behavioral Sciences. Fong & Sons Printers Pte Ltd.

Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014

Thank you!

Lowe Ana Marie L. LigadTrance

WILCOXON SIGNED RANKS TEST

November 2014