A teacher was interested to see if a change of curriculum/instructional approach would make a difference in student achievement - possibly at a statistically significant level. As such, the teacher assessed his students as a "Pre-Test", and after nine weeks of the new curricular/instructional approach, assessed his students in a "Post-Test" fashion. The following depicts both the "Pre-Test" and "Post-Test" achievement scores of the students enrolled in the teacher's class:
Pre-Test Phase Post-Test Phase
77 85
65 71
45 70
89 90
81 85
75 75
88 89
78 83
90 90
81 84
76 86
73 77
80 86
66 75
87 90
Assignment:
1. What was the mean difference of the comparison in Pre-Test and Post-Test scores?
- The mean difference of the comparison in Pre-Test and Post-Test is -5.6667.
2. What was the statistical significance level (p) of the mean score comparison?
- The statistical significance level is 0.0032.
3. Was the "Assumption of Normality" satisfied with the data associated with the scenario? Provide a statistical rationale for your response... (Hint: address the Pre/Post Test Difference data)...
*Note:
If the assumption of normality has been violated in the scenario, merely state it with the statistical rationale in your response. The researcher would then have the option of "Bootstrapping" the finding in SPSS or use the Non-Parametric alternative to the t test of Dependent Means - the Wilcoxon Sign-Rank Test.
4. Given the finding in the scenario, does the researcher "Reject or Retain" the Null Hypothesis (H0) that would be associated with the scenario? Provide a rationale for your response...
5. If the Alternative Hypothesis (Ha) for the scenario was stated as, "The novel curricular/instructional technique will increase student achievement at a statistically significant level", what would be the researcher's response? Provide a rationale for your response...