SETTING UP A

HYPOTHESIS TEST
LESSON OBJECTIVES

On completion of this lesson, you should be able to:

• Conduct an experiment to test a hypothesis

• Set an alpha value for your experiment
• Calculate a z statistic for your experiment
• Interpret the result of a z test
• Draw conlusions from your test result
READING

• Salkind & Frey (2019)

• Chapter 7: “Hypotheticals and you”

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EXPERIMENT

• Suppose a neurologist is testing the effect of a drug

response time by:
– injecting 100 rats with a unit dose of the drug
– subject each rat to a neurological stimulus
– record the response time
• Response time for rats not injected with the drug
(control group) is 1.2 seconds
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• Test whether the mean response time for drug-injected and https://alchetron.com/Laboratory-rat

rats differs from 1.2 secs

EXPERIMENT – DESCRIPTIVE
STATISTICS
• Key statistics:

µ = 1.2
= 1.052
s = 0.498
n = 100

• Conduct test using alpha = 0.01

HYPOTHESIS
𝑿 −𝝁
• The null hypothesis is the presumption 𝒁=
that drug-injected rats have the same
mean response time μ as control rats
σ
unless the research indicates otherwise
• Thus, a two-tailed test… √𝒏
(H0): μ = 1.2 (Mean response time is 1.2 secs)

(H1): μ ≠ 1.2 (Mean response time is less than

1.2 secs or greater than 1.2 secs)
Z STATISTIC

• The z (test) statistic measures the number of standard

deviations between the observed value of and the null-
hypothesized value μ = 1.2:
(H0): μ = 1.2
• The test statistic is:
𝑿 −𝝁
𝒁=
σ
√𝒏
• The rejection region must be designated to detect a departure
(H1): μ ≠ 1.2
from μ = 1.2 in either direction
• So reject H0 for values of z that are either too small
(-ve) or too large (+ve)
CALCULATIONS
Key statistics:

µ =
1.2
=
1.052
s =
0.498
n =
100
𝑿 −𝝁 1.052− 1.2
𝒁= ¿ ¿ − α 2.98
σ 0.498 0.01
=

√𝒏 √ 100
WHAT DOES RESULT MEAN? Key statistics:

µ =

𝒛 =− 2.98 1.2
=
1.052
s =
0.498

?
n =
100

α =
0.01
REJECTION REGION

z = -2.98
IMPLICATION OF RESULTS
Key statistics:

µ =
1.2
=
1.052
s =
0.498
n = z = -2.98
100

e j e c t H 0
• The sample mean (1.052) is approximately
threeαstandard
0.01
= deviations below the null-
hypothesized value of 1.2 in the sampling
R
distribution of
CONCLUSION

• A one sample z-Test was conducted to determine if

the response time in rats injected with a drug differed
from the population mean of 1.2 seconds
• The test was conducted at α = 0.01
• The obtained zstat (-2.98) was less than the zcrit
(-2.575)
• Reject Null Hypothesis
• Null Hypothesis is not true
• It appears that there is a difference in response times