In one of the areas a couple of social workers are intereste

In one of the areas, a couple of social workers are interested in whether a new scheme would improve the quality of life for older people who live in single-person households. They intend to investigate this by carrying out a trial comparing the new scheme with the status quo.

Through local advertising, the social workers hope to generate a list of older people who live in single-person households and are willing to take part in the trial. Using this list, the social workers intend to split the older people into pairs in such a way that the pairs have backgrounds and circumstances that are as similar as possible. They will then offer the new scheme to one person in each pair, the person being chosen at random.

What design of trial is this?. Why is it important that within each pair the older person who is offered the new scheme is chosen at random?

Solution

This is a paired test for two samples.

For any hypohthesis to test, randomness is very important. Bias leads to outliers thus spoiling the very purpose of the test of hypothesis.

Hence old persons who are offered new schemes must be chosen at random and treatments given to two pairs.

Then means of the two pairs and std deviation arrived at then t test can be conducted for testing of hypothesis for equality of two pairs.