Educ 213 E-Portfolio of Macaya

We the NDMU Students.This blog is designed as a partial fulfillment in Educ.213(Advanced Educational Statistics).With this blog, the author is aspiring for strategies and methods which are useful to develop her potentials for the 21st century skills which are blended with higher order thinking skills, multiple intelligences, ICT and multimedia.

Lunes, Hulyo 25, 2011

T-Test

A t-test is used to determine if the scores of two groups differ on a single variable. A t-test is designed to test for the differences in mean scores. For instance, you could use a t-test to determine whether writing ability differs among students in two classrooms.
Note: A t-test is appropriate only when looking at paired data. It is useful in analyzing scores of two groups of participants on a particular variable or in analyzing scores of a single group of participants on two variables.

Z-Test

A Z-test is any statistical test for which the distribution of the test statistic under the null hypothesis can be approximated by a normal distribution.[dubious ] Due to the central limit theorem, many test statistics are approximately normally distributed for large samples. Therefore, many statistical tests can be performed as approximate Z-tests if the sample size is large

ANOVA

The ANOVA (analysis of variance) is a statistical test which makes a single, overall decision as to whether a significant difference is present among three or more sample means (Levin 484). An ANOVA is similar to a t-test. However, the ANOVA can also test multiple groups to see if they differ on one or more variables. The ANOVA can be used to test between-groups and within-groups differences. There are two types of ANOVAs:
One-Way ANOVA: This tests a group or groups to determine if there are differences on a single set of scores. For instance, a one-way ANOVA could determine whether freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors differed in their reading ability.
Multiple ANOVA (MANOVA): This tests a group or groups to determine if there are differences on two or more variables. For instance, a MANOVA could determine whether freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors differed in reading ability and whether those differences were reflected by gender. In this case, a researcher could determine (1) whether reading ability differed across class levels, (2) whether reading ability differed across gender, and (3) whether there was an interaction between class level and gender.

Correlation

Correlation tests are used to determine how strongly the scores of two variables are associated – or correlated – with each other. A researcher might want to know, for instance, whether a correlation exists between students' writing placement examination scores and their scores on a standardized test such as the ACT or SAT. Correlation is measured using values between +1.0 and -1.0. Correlations close to 0 indicate little or no relationship between two variables, while correlations close to +1.0 (or -1.0) indicate strong positive (or negative) relationships (Hayes et al. 554).
Correlation denotes positive or negative association between variables in a study. Two variables are positively associated when larger values of one tend to be accompanied by larger values of the other. The variables are negatively associated when larger values of one tend to be accompanied by smaller values of the other (Moore 208).
An example of a strong positive correlation would be the correlation between age and job experience. Typically, the longer people are alive, the more job experience they might have.
An example of a strong negative relationship might occur between the strength of people's party affiliations and their willingness to vote for a candidate from different parties. In many elections, Democrats are unlikely to vote for Republicans, and vice versa.

Regression

Regression analysis attempts to determine the best "fit" between two or more variables. The independent variable in a regression analysis is a continuous variable, and thus allows you to determine how one or more independent variables predict the values of a dependent variable.
Simple Linear Regression is the simplest form of regression. Like a correlation, it determines the extent to which one independent variables predicts a dependent variable. You can think of a simple linear regression as a correlation line. Regression analysis provides you with more information than correlation does, however. It tells you how well the line "fits" the data. That is, it tells you how closely the line comes to all of your data points. The line in the figure indicates the regression line drawn to find the best fit among a set of data points. Each dot represents a person and the axes indicate the amount of job experience and the age of that person. The dotted lines indicate the distance from the regression line. A smaller total distance indicates a better fit. Some of the information provided in a regression analysis, as a result, indicates the slope of the regression line, the R value (or correlation), and the strength of the fit (an indication of the extent to which the line can account for variations among the data points).
Multiple Linear Regression allows one to determine how well multiple independent variables predict the value of a dependent variable. A researcher might examine, for instance, how well age and experience predict a person's salary. The interesting thing here is that one would no longer be dealing with a regression "line." Instead, since the study deals with three dimensions (age, experience, and salary), it would be dealing with a plane, that is, with a two-dimensional figure. If a fourth variable was added to the equations, one would be dealing with a three-dimensional figure, and so on.