Question

7.13 An office of physicians wanted to determine the efficacy (effectiveness) of pseudoephedrine and acetaminophen in the treatment of discomfort associated with the common cold. In their study, they randomly divided 430 subjects into two groups: Group 1 (n = 214) received pseudoephedrine and acetaminophen; Group 2 (n = 214) received a placebo. The goal of the study was to discover whether the mean symptom assessment score of the individuals receiving the treatment (Group 1) was less than that of the control group (Group 2). In Group 1, the mean reduction in the symptom assessment scores was 1.30, with a standard deviation of 0.88; in Group 2, participants had a mean reduction in the symptom assessment score of 0.93, with a standard deviation 0f 0.78. Assuming that the data are normally distributed, test the claim at the 0.05 level of significance.

Answer 1