My girlfriend is researching teaching methods using a questionaire, and she
has answers for questions in the form of numbers from 1 to 5 where 5 is
strongly agree with a statement and 1 is strongly disagree. She is proposing
to do a t-test to compare, for example, male and female responses to a
particular question.
I was surprised by this because I always thought that you needed at least
interval data in order for a t-test to be valid. Her textbook actually says
it is OK to do this though. I don't have any of my old (life-sciences) stats
books with me, so I can't check what I used to do.
So are the social scientists playing fast and loose with test validity, or
is my memory playing up?
Cheers,
Ben
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