Independent T-Test

Research Question - Is there a difference in how often males and females wear a seatbelt when riding in
a car with someone else?
Note - For illustration purposes of this assignment, I will use an ordinal DV for the independent sample ttest, even though technically this test requires an interval or ratio dependent variable. Therefore, please
note that I will be using an ordinal variable for the DV for illustration purposes only. Typically we have 1
categorical independent variable with two levels and one dependent continuous variable.
Null hypothesis - There is no statistically significant difference in how often males and females wear a
seatbelt when riding in a car with someone else.
Independent Variable: Sex (2 groups: Male and Female) nominal variable
Dependent Variable: How often do you wear a seatbelt when riding in a car with someone else? (Q10)
Ordinal variable (illustration purposes ONLY)
Analysis - The independent samples t-test is appropriate for comparing the means between two
different (or independent) groups. Here we are comparing the mean how often do you wear a seatbelt
when riding in a car with someone else between two independent groups (males and females). The IV
is gender and DV is how often do you wear a seatbelt when riding in a car with someone else, lets refer
to it as wear seatbelt.
Step-By-Step and Interpretation The null hypothesis is that there is no difference between the two
groups and the research hypothesis is that there is a statistically significant difference. CLICK ANALYZE
COMPARE MEANS INDEPENDENT SAMPLES T-TEST. Now, you have an open dialogue box. The
grouping variable is the dichotomous variable which is gender. The testing variable which is usually an
interval/ratio/dependent variable, but for purposes of this example is an ordinal variable which is how
often do you wear a seatbelt when riding in a car with someone else (Q10). Select the variable of
interest which is gender in the left-hand list and use the arrow to move it to GROUPING VARIABLE. Next,
CLICK DEFINE GROUP button. This will help you communicate with SPSS what the IV stand for. The
DEFINE GROUP dialogue box opens. SPSS wants to know what number represents the first group and
what number represents the second group. Type 1, for Group 1 and Type 2 for Group 2. CLICK
CONTINUE.

OUTPUT window appears

Now lets interpret the results

First lets look at the first chart titled, Group Statistics. In the first column, you will see female and
male under the title, What is your sex? This chart provides us with descriptive statistics such as the
number of participants which is 1262 for females and 1086 for males. If you continue to look across we
also see the mean, SD, and SE. This chart just provides us with basic information for our test. This chart
also shows us which group has a higher mean. Based on this chart we can see that males have a slightly
higher average 1.93 than females which is 1.84. We can note that males are slightly wearing their
seatbelt more often than females.
Next, we look at our Independent Samples Test chart. Here we have to look at either the top or bottom
row. In order to decide which row to read look at the column titled, Levenes Test for Equality of
Variances (red box). The Levenes Test is used to establish if our variables males and females differ in
their variability between scores. In this test there are two columns titled, F and Sig (blue circle). We are
going to look at one value which is Sig. The Sig is .000. Since, the sig. value is less than .05 this means
that the variability is different, meaning that the values in one variable differs more than the values in
the other. Because the Sig. is less than .05 we read from the bottom row (green box) If Levenes Test
was greater than .05 you would read the top row.
Now, that we have determined which row to read from we can review our T-Test results. The results will
tell you if the mean (average) is statistically different between males and females. The T-value is -6.457

with a DF (degree of freedom) 2272.906, and the associated p-value is .000. This p-value is less than .05.
Therefore, we would reject the null hypothesis that there is no difference between the means and
accept and conclude that, there is a statistically significant difference between males and females in
their reports of how often they wear a seatbelt when in the car with someone else. The mean difference
(blue triangle) determines the difference in means. For purposes of this example, it would be male
reports minus female reports. Note that, (orange box) the sig 2-tailed (p-value) is the same for the top
and bottom row because (gold box) the standard deviations, or variances are close. This explains why
the two p-values are the same (orange box). SPSS also provides the mean difference (red triangle)
between the two means (orange circle) which is the mean difference between 1.93 and 1.84 which
provided the mean difference. The standard error (green triangle) associated with the mean difference
is .013. SPSS also provides the 95% confidence intervals (black box) which tells us the difference
between the means.