Question

Interpreting Chi Square Goodness of Fit

(Please use the attached document, bold the questions, and include your answers in non-bolded font).

A child psychologist observed that in a random sample of 60 toddlers, 27 preferred to play with

masculine toys, 19 preferred to play with feminine toys and 14 preferred to play with gender

neutral toys.

A chi-square test of the null hypothesis is provided below:

CATEGORY
	Observed N	Expected N	Residual
Masculine Toys	27	20	7
Feminine Toys	19	20	-1
Neutral Toys	14	20	-6
Total	60

Test Statistics
	CATEGORY
Chi Square	4.300
df	2
Asymp. Sig.	.116

a. Why is the chi-square goodness-of-fit the appropriate test? Explain.

b. Is there a significant preference for these three types of toys? Explain.

c. Using the information in the tables above, write an APA style results section

Answer 1

A. The chi-square goodness-of fit is appropriate for the study because there is one categorical variable (toy preference) from a single population and the researcher seeks to to determine whether sample data are consistent with a hypothesized distribution (assumed to be equal in this case).

B. There is no significant preference for the three types of toys. If the Asymp. Sig. statistic is more than .05, indicating that the differences seem between the observed and expected frequencies are not significant.

C. A chi-square test of goodness-of-fit was performed to determine whether the three toys were equally preferred. Preference for the toys were found to be equally distributed in the population, X² (2, N = 27) = 4.3, p > 0.5.