KRUSKAL-WALLIS TEST
group, tj is the observed rank for an observation for the
The Kruskal-Wallis (Kruskal & Wallis, 1952) is a non-
parametric statistical test that assesses the differences
among three or more independently sampled groups on
a single, non-normally distributed continuous variable.
Non-normally distributed data (e.g., ordinal or rank data)
are suitable for the Kruskal-Wallis test. In contrast,
the one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), which is a
parametric test, may be used for a normally distributed
continuous variable. The Kruskal-Wallis test is an exten-
sion of the two-group Mann-Whitney U (Wilcoxon rank)
test. Thus, the Kruskal-Wallis is a more generalized form
of the Mann-Whitney U test and is the nonparametric
version of the one-way ANOVA.
A typical application of the Kruskal-Wallis test is to
assess whether three or more groups differ on a single
variable that fails to meet the normality assumptions
of ANOVA. Since the variable of interest does not meet
normality assumptions, we may not compare group means;
instead we compare ranks. The null hypothesis specifies
that the groups are subsets from the same population
(i.e., H0 : (a, b, c, . . . , n) ⊆p). To test the null hypothesis,
we combine the groups into a single group and rank the
variable of interest. The new rank scores are summed by
group (Ta , Tb , . . . , Tn ) and, along with group sample sizes,
can be used to calculate the H statistic (see Equation 1). H
reflects the variance in ranks between groups and closely
resembles the chi-square distribution. When testing the
null, we can use H and refer to a chi-square table with
degrees of freedom equal to n (number of groups) minus
1. If H exceeds a critical value, we may conclude that
the groups do not come from the same population; many
researchers often conclude that the test is an omnibus test
for differences between groups, but many statisticians
object to this interpretation:
H = N − 1(gnn (ti − Ti ) /gsnn (tj − Ti ) )
2 2
(1)
where nn is the sample size of the corresponding group, g is
the sum of the group n, snn is the sum of the corresponding
The Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology, edited by Irving B. Weiner and W. Edward Craighead.
Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
group n, ti is the average observed rank sums for the
corresponding group, and Ti is the observed total average
rank sums.
Suppose we are interested in assessing whether the
crime rankings from a random sample of 15 U.S. cities
from the Northeast, West, and South differ. The original
data are as follows: Northeast (U.S. rankings: 2, 5, 89, 203,
241), West (U.S. rankings: 1, 34, 50, 55, 292), and South
(U.S. rankings: 6, 12, 19, 22, 356). The procedure reranks
the rank data and leaves us with new relative rankings
among these 15 cities: Northeast (2, 3, 11, 12, 13), West
(1, 8, 9, 10, 14), and South (4, 5, 6, 7, 15). The H statistic
for the data above is nonsignificant (H(2) = 0.14, p = .93),
and we accordingly fail to reject the null and conclude that
the three regions do not differ on crime rankings.
REFERENCE
Kruskal, W. H., & Wallis, W. A. (1952). Use of ranks in
one-criterion variance analysis. Journal of the American
Statistical Association, 47, 583–621.
SUGGESTED READINGS
Cohen, B. H. (2008). Explaining psychological statistics (3rd ed.).
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Gibbons, J. D. (1993). Nonparametric statistics: An introduction
(Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, 90). Newbury
Park, CA: Sage.
Hollander, M., & Wolfe, D. A. (1999). Nonparametric statistical
methods (2nd ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons.
PATRICK E. MCKIGHT
JULIUS NAJAB
George Mason University
See also: Mann-Whitney U Test; Nonparametric Statistical
Tests