Question

A researcher collects data on married couples to see whether men & women differ in their mean levels of marital satisfaction. For each married couple, both husband and wife completed a marital satisfaction questionnaire. The researcher then conducted an independent samples t-test to test the null hypothesis that male and female marital satisfaction is equal. Is this analysis appropriate? Provide reasoning for your answer.

Answer 1

Since the data on married couples to see whether men & women differ in their mean levels of marital satisfaction is likert scale type. it involves marital satisfaction scale. The analysis is not appropriate. The basic reason is that the assumption of normality for applying t-test is important. since the data points are not continuous and are mere discrete points representing marital satisfaction level (For example: 1: Highly dissatisfied, 2: dissatisfied, 3: Neutral, 4: Satisfied, 5: Highly Satisfied). In order to explore results in this analysis, one should approach with non-parametric statistics.