State whether the alternative hypothesis to be tested justifies the choice of te

Question

State whether the alternative hypothesis to be tested justifies the choice of test (that is, say whether the test said below is “best to use” is correct given the stated alternative hypothesis) in your reply also include an explanation for your agreement or disagreement.

Starbucks is conducting a study to test the effect of caffeine on the overall number of hours that participants in the study sleep. There are two conditions for the experiment: participants given caffeine, and participants given no caffeine. There are 35 participants in the experiment, and each will participate in both conditions.

Null: H0: µ1 = µ2; no difference between the two conditions.

Alternative: HA: µ1 ? µ2; there will be differences between the two conditions.

IV: Caffeine.

DV: Hours of sleep.

Test: Paired samples t-Test.

Results:

We conducted a paired-samples t-test to test our hypothesis that caffeine will have a significant effect on the number of hours that participants in the study sleep. Using the total number of hours slept as the dependent variable and caffeine/no caffeine as our independent conditions, we were able to determine that there was a significant difference between the two conditions. Specifically, there was a significant difference in the scores for caffeine (M=6.2, SD=1.35) and no caffeine (M=9.7, SD=1.35) conditions on the number of hours slept; t(4)=-5.77,p=0.05. These results suggest that the caffeine in our coffee drinks has an effect on the number of hours slept, specifically that consumption of caffeine results in decreased sleep hours. As such, we reject our null hypothesis that there will be no difference between the two conditions.

Explanation / Answer

The statistical measure used for the study is appropriate. The paired sample t-test is used in studies where the researcher aims to determine whether the mean difference between two sets of observations is zero. In this study, we have two conditions of the experiment. In a paired sample t-test, each subject or entity is measured twice, resulting in pairs of observations

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