Steps in Hypothesis Testing (3 of 5)
- The final step is to describe the result and the statistical conclusion
in an understandable way. Be sure to present the descriptive
statistics as well as whether the effect was significant or not.
For example, a significant difference between a group that received a
drug and a control group might be described as follow:
Subjects in the drug group scored significantly higher (M = 23) than did subjects in the control group (M = 17), t(18) = 2.4, p = 0.027.
The statement that "t(18) =2.4" has to do with how the probability value (p) was calculated. A small minority of researchers might object to two aspects of this wording. First, some believe that the significance level rather than the probability level should be reported. The argument for reporting the probability value is presented in another section. Second, since the alternative hypothesis was stated as µ1 ≠ µ2, some might argue that it can only be concluded that the population means differ and not that the population mean for the drug group is higher than the population mean for the control group.