Question

Is the t-test the appropriate test for this study?yes, state why using examples to support your agreement or if no, state why not, using examples to support your disagreement

A student, who has gotten sick, decides to try a herbal remedy and the illness lasts for a couple of days. Later on in the future, the student gets sick again, but decides to use pharmaceutical medication and the illness lasts for an over a week. The student decides to create a survey for his friends on the duration of their colds based on whether they did a herbal remedy or used pharmaceutical drugs. The student notices that the data recorded from his friends has a mean of a few days of their illness when using the herbal remedy. The student utilizes a t-test to compare the means between the two groups and levels of the independent variable in order to understand or know the probability of those results.

Answer 1

A t-test would be an appropriate statistic for this study, as the student wants to compare the differences of the means of individuals who took the herbal remedy in contrast to those who opted for the pharmaceutical treatment. The t-test provides an indication whether the observed differences are significant or are the result of chance error. For example, if a researcher wanted to know if students who consumed performance-enhancing drugs performed better on their maths examination in comparison to those who did not consume any such drugs, a t-test would be utilised as well to check if the means of their maths scores are equal or significantly differ from each other.