The t test tells you how significant the differences between group means are. It lets you know if those differences in means could have happened by chance. The t test is usually used when data sets follow a normal distribution but you don’t know the population variance.
For example, you might flip a coin 1,000 times and find the number of heads follows a normal distribution for all trials. So you can calculate the sample variance from this data, but the population variance is unknown. Or, a drug company may want to test a new cancer drug to find out if it improves life expectancy. In an experiment, there’s always a control group (a group who are given a placebo, or “sugar pill”). So while the control group may show an average life expectancy of +5 years, the group taking the new drug might have a life expectancy of +6 years. It would seem that the drug might work. But it could be due to a fluke. To test this, researchers would use a Student’s t-test to find out if the results are repeatable for an entire population.
In addition, a t test uses a t-statistic and compares this to t-distribution values to determine if the results are statistically significant.
However, note that you can only uses a t test to compare two means. If you want to compare three or more means, use an ANOVA instead.
The T Score.
The t score is a ratio between the difference between two groups and the difference within the groups.
- Larger t scores = more difference between groups.
- Smaller t score = more similarity between groups.
A t score of 3 tells you that the groups are three times as different from each other as they are within each other. So when you run a t test, bigger t-values equal a greater probability that the results are repeatable.
T-Values and P-values
How big is “big enough”? Every t-value has a p-value to go with it. A p-value from a t test is the probability that the results from your sample data occurred by chance. P-values are from 0% to 100% and are usually written as a decimal (for example, a p value of 5% is 0.05). Low p-values indicate your data did not occur by chance. For example, a p-value of .01 means there is only a 1% probability that the results from an experiment happened by chance.
Calculating the Statistic / Test Types
There are three main types of t-test:
- An Independent Samples t-test compares the means for two groups.
- A Paired sample t-test compares means from the same group at different times (say, one year apart).
- A One sample t-test tests the mean of a single group against a known mean.
You can find the steps for an independent samples t test here. But you probably don’t want to calculate the test by hand (the math can get very messy. Use the following tools to calculate the t test:
- How to do a T test in Excel.
- T test in SPSS.
- T-distribution on the TI 89.
- T distribution on the TI 83.
What is a Paired T Test (Paired Samples T Test / Dependent Samples T Test)?
A paired t test (also called a correlated pairs t-test, a paired samples t test or dependent samples t test) is where you run a t test on dependent samples. Dependent samples are essentially connected — they are tests on the same person or thing. For example:
- Knee MRI costs at two different hospitals,
- Two tests on the same person before and after training,
- Two blood pressure measurements on the same person using different equipment.
When to Choose a Paired T Test / Paired Samples T Test / Dependent Samples T Test
Choose the paired t-test if you have two measurements on the same item, person or thing. But you should also choose this test if you have two items that are being measured with a unique condition. For example, you might be measuring car safety performance in vehicle research and testing and subject the cars to a series of crash tests. Although the manufacturers are different, you might be subjecting them to the same conditions.
With a “regular” two sample t test, you’re comparing the means for two different samples. For example, you might test two different groups of customer service associates on a business-related test or testing students from two universities on their English skills. But if you take a random sample each group separately and they have different conditions, your samples are independent and you should run an independent samples t test (also called between-samples and unpaired-samples).
The null hypothesis for the independent samples t-test is μ1 = μ2. So it assumes the means are equal. With the paired t test, the null hypothesis is that the pairwise difference between the two tests is equal (H0: µd = 0).
Paired Samples T Test By hand
Example question: Calculate a paired t test by hand for the following data:
Step 1: Subtract each Y score from each X score.
Step 2: Add up all of the values from Step 1 then set this number aside for a moment.
Step 3: Square the differences from Step 1.
Step 4: Add up all of the squared differences from Step 3.
Step 5: Use the following formula to calculate the t-score:
- The “ΣD” is the sum of X-Y from Step 2.
- ΣD2: Sum of the squared differences (from Step 4).
- (ΣD)2: Sum of the differences (from Step 2), squared.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Σ notation used in the t test, it basically means to “add everything up”. You may find this article useful: summation notation.
Step 6: Subtract 1 from the sample size to get the degrees of freedom. We have 11 items. So 11 – 1 = 10.
Step 7: Find the p-value in the t-table, using the degrees of freedom in Step 6. But if you don’t have a specified alpha level, use 0.05 (5%).
So for this example t test problem, with df = 10, the t-value is 2.228.
Step 8: In conclusion, compare your t-table value from Step 7 (2.228) to your calculated t-value (-2.74). The calculated t-value is greater than the table value at an alpha level of .05. In addition, note that the p-value is less than the alpha level: p <.05. So we can reject the null hypothesis that there is no difference between means.
However, note that you can ignore the minus sign when comparing the two t-values as ± indicates the direction; the p-value remains the same for both directions.