A new curriculum has been implemented across several medical
schools that is designed to improve medical students’ analytic
skills. An evaluation committee is concerned that the new
curriculum may be differentially effective for male and female
students. To evaluate the new curriculum, random samples of male
(n=15) and female (n=12) students who completed the new curriculum
are selected and given a test to assess their analytic skills. The
mean number of analytic problems solved correctly for males was
12.4 (s=3.6) and the mean number for females was 15.8 (s=4.2). It
is reasonable to assume that the test scores are normally
distributed. Use the sample data to determine if there is evidence
of a difference in the mean number of problems correctly solved by
female and male students.
1. What type of test would be used to test the null
hypothesis?
independent samples t-test
one-sample t-test
paired samples t-test
2. Calculate the appropriate test statistic that would be used
to test the null hypothesis
3. The p-value for the calculated test statistic is 0.03671.
With significance level α set at .05, what would we conclude from
these results?
p-value > .05, null hypothesis would not be rejected, we
conclude that mean test scores are not different for males and
females.
p-value > .05, null hypothesis would not be rejected, we
conclude that mean test scores are different for males and females
with males having higher a higher mean.
p-value < .05, null hypothesis would be rejected, we conclude
that mean test scores are different for males and females with
females having higher a higher mean.
p-value < .05, null hypothesis would be rejected, we conclude
that mean test scores are not different for males and females.