Question

An investigation is undertaken to examine the average times to relief from headache pain under two entirely different treatments: Medication vs. Relaxation. Patients suffering from chronic headaches are enrolled in a study and randomly assigned to one of the two treatment groups. Patients are instructed to either take the assigned medication or to perform the relaxation exercises at the onset of their next headache. They are also instructed to record the time, in minutes, until the headache pain is resolved. Fifteen patients are assigned to the medication treatment and report a mean time to relief of 33.8 min with a variance of 2.85 min. A second random sample of 15 patients is assigned to the relaxation treatment and report a mean time to relief of 22.4 min with a variance of 3.07 min. Do the observed sample means provide evidence of a statistically significant difference in means in the populations? Run the appropriate test to assess whether there is a significant difference in the mean time to relief under the two treatments using a 5% level of significance.

Answer 1