Assignment 5 Questions

Here are my responses to yesterday’s questions about Assignment 5….

1. Single Samples t-Test

This test is used to compare a mean value of a sample to a known mean, for example to compare our data to a
national, state, or accreditation/standard benchmark. In this scenario we read that the average national BMI is
28.6; we want to know if our patient census is significantly different from this. We upload our data in Excel to
SPSS. We have this output in SPSS, and so what does this indicate and how do we report this?

First, in addition to the t-Test we want to use the descriptives function in SPSS to determine our sample’s mean
BMI. And so for our scenario, let’s say we find this to be 29.2. Okay so in the output we see that our sig, our
significance, our calculated p value, is p = .116. Remember we can read this as being ‘the probability (p) that
we are wrong is .116 (11.6%) if we reject the Null’, and so we can not reject the Null, this is higher than the risk
we are willing to accept which would be p = .05, or only 5%. So this means that we cannot reject the Null, and
therefore we say there is no statistical difference in our average BMI and the national average. By the way I find
that students typically write too much to explain these results. Here is how I would report this finding,
remember keep this simple to the point, okay no more than a few short sentences .

A Single Sample t-Test was calculated to compare the BMI of our sample with the reported national mean. No
significant difference was found between the BMI of the sample (m = 29.2) and the national mean (m= 28.6)
(t(99) = 1.384, p = .116).

Specific Questions about the Single Sample t-Test (my responses in italics)
a. Do we report if there is a difference and significance for this….
Yes. As above.
b…. As we are not really looking at differences between the two groups, it doesn't seem right.
Yes, we are looking for a difference between our sample mean and the known national mean…
c….SPSS provides outcome data in addition to the mean (with a t value, df, & significance). I guess I am
confused as what the significance would mean for a single sample.
Right, so remember, think about a common BMI chart on a wall in a patient exam room. We find the patient’s
height, and weight, and go to the chart and we see their BMI. Right? In the same way actually, precisely the
same way, the t score and df can be used to “look up” the p value, we used to do this in the old days, wow time
consuming! Now SPSS does this for us, but we still report these values. So in the output above what we are
seeing is a comparison our our mean BMI to the known mean. Let me explain it this way if it helps. In an
Independent Samples t-Test what SPSS does is (a) calculate the mean of each of two groups, and then (b)
compares those two means… Right? In this test all that is different is we give SPSS one of the means, the known
mean, and so now it (a) takes the mean we give it and calculates the mean for our sample and then (b)
compares these two means. Exact same results….
d….Our t test is looking at differences so the +/- value of the t test does not really matter right? And then the
computed p value tells us if the difference is significant or not.
Correct! And correct.
2. Presenting Results
Specific Questions (my responses in italics)
a. How would you like the short paragraph describing that analysis? I know I should include:
The name of the statistical test and the variables used.
Yes, you can follow the template I have in the Presenting Results slides I made. I will post them to this
announcement…. You can actually copy this, making substitutions as needed, such as the name of the test, but
you will find these generally follow the same sort of pattern….Note that the way I report the results is only a
matter of well about 1-3 sentences typically.
b. Interpret the results. Was the result statistically significant at a p level or alpha (α) level of 0.05 or 5%? What
can you conclude? Can you give me an example, I'm a tough time looking at the graph results and then writing
out my answer. What numbers should I be looking at to see if the p or alpha is = .05/5% I think I'm getting
confused looking at the resulted numbers on SPSS.
Yes because in SPSS what is noted is “Sig.” which stands for “Significance” but you can take that to be the
calculated p value….so there are only two possible answers to this question….
* IF the Sig (p value) in SPSS is reported to be less than .05, it means that we have found a difference,
significance, we can reject the Null….
* IF the Sig (p value) in SPSS is reported to be .05 or greater, it means that we have not found a difference,
there is no significance, we can not reject the Null….
In the document “Presenting Results” what I did was to take a typical test in each group, I have written up
results when significance is found, (Sig is below .05) AND when there is no significance (Sig is .05 or higher)

3. Chi Square
Specific Questions (my responses in italics)
a. ….with the chi square test…. how do I answer the question “Do patients with chronic disease report less
satisfaction?” with the chi square value. What does the value tell me about satisfaction levels?
Excellent question!…okay this answer has three parts…I will work my way backwards here, so bear with me.
1. First the problem is SPSS gives us “a lot” more than we need in this output! All we are going to report for
our p value is the Pearson Chi Square…I have an announcement explaining the other tests… So here we have a
X2 (this is our Chi Value – a capital X in italics with a superscript 2 after it which we call “Chi Square””) of
17.601 and degrees freedom of 1, but note the Significance is .000, so here we have p = .000 meaning we have
found a difference, yes those with chronic disease and those without chronic disease have significantly different
reports of satisfaction… (by the way, again, the X2 and the df can be taken to a table, just like a BMI table, and
there we can compute our p value. So we report these, but SPSS does the calculation for us!)

Table 1.

Chi-Square

Asymptotic
Significance (2- Exact Sig. Exact Sig.
Value df sided) (2-sided) (1-sided)
Pearson Chi-Square 17.601a 1 .000
b
Continuity Correction 14.175 1 .000
Likelihood Ratio 18.316 1 .000
Fisher's Exact Test .000 .000
Linear-by-Linear
17.378 1 .000
Association
N of Valid Cases 79
a. 2 cells (50.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 2.13.
b. Computed only for a 2x2 table
However in this output notice the little “a” after our Chi-Square value, we see that two cells have less than a
frequency of 5, so in this case, our assumptions for Chi Square are violated, so we report the Fisher’s Exact
Test results instead of the Pearson’s Chi. So we will report a Fisher’s Exact Test was calculated and that a
significant difference (p=.000) was found between satisfaction for those with chronic disease and those without
chronic disease – (use the two sided result.)

2. Before finishing this analysis, I want to take a step back to answer your question about “What does the value
tell me about satisfaction levels?” There are a few possible responses to this question.
(a) All the above tells us is that the groups are different in satisfaction. Remember for our Chi Square we are
using nominal data, so what we would have to get to this point is two variables that use nominal data. Our
Independent Variable is something like CHRONIC and it has two conditions (1) has chronic disease and (2)
does not have chronic disease. Our Dependent Variable is something like SATISFIED also in nominal data,
having two conditions such as (1) is satisfied with care, and (2) is not satisfied with care. So the results above
only tell us the two groups, chronic and not chronic are different.
(b) IF our satisfaction results are say in percentages, then we would not use Chi, we would use an Independent
Samples t-Test or if it was in ordinal data we would use the Mann Whitney U, so we do not know about differing
levels of satisfaction, we only know if the participants here are satisfied or if they are not satisfied, and again
from what we have above, we only know there is a difference.

3. And so to get an idea of which group reports a higher frequency of satisfaction, if that is what we mean by
levels, and we do need to know this to report our results, we have to turn to the crosstabulation that comes out
of the Chi Square… so imagine in our output we also have this….

Crosstabulation
Chronic Not Chronic
Satisfied 3 60
Not Satisfied 61 4

So it is from this, from our crosstabulation that we get an indication of what is going on, that the difference we
found in the Chi above is really that those who have Chronic Disease report less satisfaction than those who do
not have Chronic Disease. Remember what we are looking at in the crosstabulation is “frequency” what the
above indicates is that of 64 participants with chronic disease 3 were satisfied with care and 61 were not…

4. Fisher’ Exact Test

Specific Questions (my responses in italics)
a…. How do I run the Fisher’s Exact Test?
This is an outstanding question! First to explain, we don’t actually choose to “select a Fisher’s Exact Test…”as
I think the assignment instructions I wrote imply, rather we use Fisher’s when the assumptions of Chi are
violated, which include not having any cells with a zero, and no more than 20% of the cells having a frequency
of 5 or less. Which means in a 2x2 table like the one above that none of the cells can have a frequency of 5 or
less….looking at the crosstabulation above we have two of our four cells with a frequency of five or less (we
have a 4 and a 3) and so in this case the Chi Square assumptions are violated and in that case we report the
value of Fisher’s as noted in the example above.

SO…in the case given for this assignment, simply select Analyze, then Descriptives, and then Crosstabs. Move
the variable Cdisease to the Rows window and Satisfaction to the Columns window. Under statistics choose Chi
Square and choose Continue, then select then Okay. Because of the way this is setup, the way I constructed the
dataset, Fisher’s will be needed and it will be automatically calculated by SPSS and you can report that value –
again see the answer to question 3 above for more details on this.

I appreciate all of these questions! Thanks!

Michael