Question

A researcher in the field of educational psychology is interested in the effects an open classroom has on intellectual development. In the open classroom things are much less structured than in a traditional classroom and she believes that this might affect problem-solving skills. An elementary school in her district switched to an open classroom format last year, and she is interested to see how this has impacted on the kids problem-solving skills.

She obtains a random sample of 49 fourth grade children and administers a conceptual problem-solving test to them. It is known that fourth graders in traditional classes have an average score of 82 on the test. The children in this study score an average of 86 with a standard deviation of 5.

Which type of statistical test should the researcher do?

A. independent two sample t-test

B. one sample t-test

C. matched pairs t-test

D. one sample Z-test

Answer 1

B. one sample t-test

The one sample t-test is a statistical procedure used to determine whether a sample of observations could have been generated by a process with a specific mean. Suppose you are interested in determining whether an assembly line produces laptop computers that weigh five pounds. To test this hypothesis, you could collect a sample of laptop computers from the assembly line, measure their weights, and compare the sample with a value of five using a one-sample t-test.