Interpretation of T-Test and One-Way ANOVA

Interpretation of T-Test and One-Way ANOVA

Methods - Measurement and Analyses

The authors do not specifically state their independent and dependent variables but based on the information provided, what you think are the independent and dependent variables and their measurement levels.

Variables

Knowledge

Perceived barriers to pain management

Demographic characteristics of nurses

There are no dependent and independent variables in the study because the assumption of correlation analysis includes that there are no dependent and independent variables.

Variables

Level of Measurement

Knowledge

Interval (Continuous)

Perceived barriers to pain management

Ordinal (Categorical)

Nursing clinical ladder

Nominal (Categorical)

ICU type

Nominal (Categorical)

Education level

Nominal (Categorical)

Hospital accreditation category

Nominal (Categorical)

Describe the psychometric properties that they present for the Knowledge and Attitudes Survey and the Perceived Barriers Scale. Comment on whether you think these scales are reliable and valid.

The psychometric properties which entail reliability of the article represent that measurement level is appropriately used that is nominal and scale level of measurement are assigned in accordance with the variable type that is in particular, knowledge and perceived barriers to pain management of nurses have scale measurement level.

In the analysis section, the authors describe their plan to examine the relationships among variables using t-tests and ANOVAs as well as other analyses. Comment on the appropriateness of their selected analyses.

Appropriateness of the t-test

For the study, t-test is not appropriate to examine the education level of the participants as in t-test; it is assumed that certain conditions should be met in order for the test to be accurate. The study by Wang and Tsai (2010) do not meet the assumptions of test that is data for the study dependent variable is not continuous and the observations of the dependent variable is not independent of the other observations of the dependent variable.

Appropriateness of the one-way ANOVA

ANOVA is also not appropriate for the study to examine the education level of the participants. The reason of this statement is that ANOVA can only be performed on numerical data; however, the variables that are knowledge and education level are not numerical that is they have nominal level of measurement.

Appropriateness of Correlation

The application of correlation analysis is appropriate for finding the relationship between nurses' knowledge of pain management and its perceived barriers.

Results

In Table 3, the authors report their results from testing knowledge and education level and also knowledge and nursing clinical ladder. They used t-tests for one analysis and a ANOVA for the other. Please discuss why they used two different analyses and whether they could have used the same analysis technique for testing both relationships and if so, which one?

For the analysis of knowledge and education level and also knowledge and nursing clinical ladder, ANOVA should be used for finding both the relationship as the dependent variable in these relationships is the nurses' knowledge about pain management; however, the factor variables are nursing clinical ladder and level of education.

Please state the assumptions for performing these tests and describe why or why not you think their data met these assumptions. Please state the null and alternative hypotheses for both these ...