Okay, I\'m statistically inept. Help me out, please. For my senior psychology th

Question

Okay, I'm statistically inept. Help me out, please.

For my senior psychology thesis, I have four groups. For three ofthem, I have the raw data (it's an art therapy thing, rated by theFormal Elements Art Therapy Scale-- 14 scale ratings perindividual), but my fourth group is reported in a study and onlythe means of each of the fourteen scales are reported. I'm tryingto compare these four groups. I ran an ANOVA and some t-tests on mythree groups with raw data, but I was informed that SPSS does notdo anything when I only have means. I need to know how to test forstatistic significance when all I have is means. What program do Iuse-- is there an online calculator that does means/weightedmeans/something like this? Thanks!

Explanation / Answer

Perhaps you can read the paper again andderive more information about the sample with unknown standarddeviation, such as the number of individuals in that sample orperhaps an estimate of that reference population variance. You maybe able to estimate the standard deviation of a population, firstdetermine the largest observation that would be expected to beobserved. This should be a real measurement, eg getting all thequestions correc (called the upper reasonable limit). Next,determine the smallest observation that would be expected to beobserved (lower reasonable limit). Then you will have to choose adivisor, eg 6.

While this estimate is not as reliable, itmay be useful as a preliminary estimate. Hope that is somewhathelpful.

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