On Mon, 17 Apr 2000 15:26:16 -0700, einsetein
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
< reformating .. >
> We have 2 groups reporting on the major problem for attending college.
You have identified two groups, after the fact? ...
> We are trying to see if the different response numbers are statistically
>significant.
You want to know if one group says YES to something more often than
the other; or some other patterns differ? Or, do you want to know if
you happened to *collect* only 10% of the males, but 50% of the
females? Do you mean "response patterns"?
> For example one group responded with an answer 13 times and the other
> group 32 times.
... compared to ... ANOTHER answer? No response?
> Since a chi square takes the mean of the two, it doesn't show
> how to compare one to the other.
Okay, you had me wondering, but now you lost me. The contingency
table test does not take a "mean", does it? What test is being
referred to? a contingency table does compare fractions....
> We have no expected mean since these are opinions.
> Do we have to assume that equal %s of people will choose each category,
> even though we categorized them after reading the answers on the surveys?
"Equal" is the assumption of the test. If your groups make certain
questions nearly tautological, or too obviously different, then those
questions don't make up an *interesting* hypothesis.
If you sorted into groups based on (X+Y) answers, you don't really
have a fair hypothesis, to ask about the presence of (X) and (Y)
separately; but you should tell about them, as descriptors.
--
Rich Ulrich, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.pitt.edu/~wpilib/index.html
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