What type of statistical test to use ?

Psychology discussion, revision, exam and homework help.

This thread is sponsored by:
Announcements Posted on
Important: please read these guidelines before posting about exams on The Student Room 28-04-2013
Sign in to Reply
  1. andrew1992's Avatar
    • Respected Member
    • Location: shrewsbury
    • Posts: 217
    What type of statistical test to use ?
    Hey i am a currently working on my university dissertation and am not strong when it comes to statistics, i would just like to ask whether i am using the correct statistical tests to analysis data in my experiment.

    My experiment is looking at the effects of music ( violent vs non violent ) on stress scores. Participants will compete a stress questionnaire , listen to either a violent or non violent piece of music and then complete the questionnaire again.

    So to analysis this data i will use 2 paired samples t tests ? (One looking at the difference in the two test scores in the violent music condition and one looking at the difference in the two test scores in the non violent music condition).

    The second part of my experiment involves the participants completing a cognitive face recognition task designed to measure aggressive cognition. For this i will carry out an independent samples t test to look at the difference in aggression scores across the two groups of participants?

    Thank You in advance
    Andrew
  2. Jam''s Avatar
    • Exalted and Worshipped Member
    • Location: London
    • Posts: 1,214
    • Warning points: 2
    Re: What type of statistical test to use ?
    What numerical values for the second test will you collect?
  3. theandyguthrie's Avatar
    • Exalted Member
    • Posts: 302
    Re: What type of statistical test to use ?
    That seems about right

    As a general rule, t-test when comparing means.
  4. Sakura-Chan's Avatar
    • TSR Idol
    Re: What type of statistical test to use ?
    (Original post by andrew1992)
    Hey i am a currently working on my university dissertation and am not strong when it comes to statistics, i would just like to ask whether i am using the correct statistical tests to analysis data in my experiment.

    My experiment is looking at the effects of music ( violent vs non violent ) on stress scores. Participants will compete a stress questionnaire , listen to either a violent or non violent piece of music and then complete the questionnaire again.

    So to analysis this data i will use 2 paired samples t tests ? (One looking at the difference in the two test scores in the violent music condition and one looking at the difference in the two test scores in the non violent music condition).
    For the first part, I think it would be better to use a 2 x 2 independent groups ANOVA, rather than t-tests.

    Your two factors would be 1) Music, which has two levels - violent and non violent, and 2) Exposure, which has two levels - before and after. Then once you've run your analysis, you would record main effects and interaction effects, saying whether they're significant or not.

    That's how I'd do it anyway, but if I were you I'd double check with your project supervisor if you can.

    You need to be more clear about what you're doing for the second part.
    Last edited by Sakura-Chan; 20-07-2012 at 14:16.
Sign in to Reply
Share this discussion:  
Article updates
Moderators

We have a brilliant team of more than 60 volunteers looking after discussions on The Student Room, helping to make it a fun, safe and useful place to hang out.

Reputation gems:
The Reputation gems seen here indicate how well reputed the user is, red gem indicate negative reputation and green indicates a good rep.
Post rating score:
These scores show if a post has been positively or negatively rated by our members.