Evaluating professors and types of variables Weinberg Fleish

Evaluating professors and types of variables: Weinberg, Fleisher, and Hashimoto (2007) studied almost 50,000 students\' evaluations of their professors in almost 400 economics courses at The Ohio State University over a 10-year period.

One finding was that there was no statistically significant differences in average student evaluations among non-tenure-track lecturers, graduate student teaching associates, and tenure-track faculty members.

Which statistical test would the researchers have used for the above finding?

chi-square test for goodness-of-fit

chi-square test for independence

independent-samples t test

ANOVA

Solution

chi-square test for goodness-of-fit

Reason:

•there can be more than two possible outcomes. Called multinomial.
•Measure a single categorical variable on each trial.
•Each person or trial falls into one of k mutually
exclusive categories.
•Null hypothesis specifies the probabilities of falling
into each of the k categories.
•Alternative hypothesis is that those are not all
correct.