between group/independent group design

I’m going to use this example to help you understand how to enter the data. Suppose
you want to study the effect of sugar (IV) (KESAN PENGAMBILAN GULA) on memory
(INGATAN TERHADAP PERKATAAN) for words (DV). You have two groups (also
called conditions) in your experiment, sugar and no sugar. Each participant only
participates in one condition of the experiment. Participants in the first condition are not
related in any way to participants in the second condition. Because the participants in
each condition are not related in any way, we will use the Independent Samples T-Test.
Here are the data.

Condition 1: Sugar Condition 2: No

Sugar
Participant 1 = 3 words Participant 1 = 2 words
Participant 2 = 6 words Participant 2 = 2 words
Participant 3 = 4 words Participant 3 = 1 words
Participant 4 = 3 words Participant 4 = 3 words
Participant 5 = 5 words Participant 5 = 3 words

What you want to know

In this experiment, you want to know if there is a significant different between the data
collected from each condition, sugar and no sugar. You want to know if sugar really
does have an effect on memory for words. Does word memory significantly increase or
decrease when people eat sugar? Is there no difference in word memory for sugar and
no sugar conditions?

Why not just look at the data?

Just looking at the data, you can probably see that there is a difference in word memory
between the two conditions. You can probably see that word memory in the sugar
condition appears to be much better than word memory in the no sugar condition.
People generally appear to remember more words when they have eaten sugar. So you
might be wondering, why can’t I just look at the data? Why do I have to conduct this t-
test? The reason is that we are not just trying to figure out if there is a difference in
words recalled between each group. We want to know if there is a statistically
significant difference. That is, a real difference as defined by statistics. The t-test will
be able to tell us that.

Two columns of data

You will use the first two columns of your SPSS data file to enter the data for the
independent samples t-test.
The first column

In this column, you should type in two different numbers to represent each of your two
conditions. For example, you could use the numbers 1 and 2 to represent your two
conditions. The 1s could be used to represent the sugar condition and the 2s could be
used to represent the no sugar condition. Take a look at what I’m talking about below.
You can see one column of data with 1s and 2s. There are five 1s. They will represent
data from the five participants in the first condition, sugar. Below the 1s are five 2s.
They will represent data from the five participants in the second condition, no sugar.
The number of 1s and 2s that you use will vary, depending on how many participants
you have in each condition.
What can’t we just type in the names sugar and no sugar?

That would make things a lot easier, wouldn’t it? This version of SPSS will not let you
directly type in labels like sugar and no sugar into the data file. You can convert the 1s
and 2s into these labels but I will spare you of that for now.

Name the first column

Double click on the top of the first column to name it. The Define Variable box will pop
up and you can enter a new name for the variable in the Variable Name area. Give the
variable a meaningful name. This will make your life a lot easier when you analyze the
data and interpret the results. Because this column represents the two conditions of the
IV, it is a good idea to use the letters “IV” in the name of the variable. You might also
want to include a word that describes what is being manipulated. In the below example,
I decided to name my variable “IVsugar.” I decided on this name because this variable
is an IV in which the presence of sugar is being manipulated. Click OK when you are
finished using the Define Variable box and it will disappear.
The second column

In this column, you should type in the actual data collected for each participant in each
condition. In the example, each data point represented the number of words
remembered.

Enter your data one condition at a time

Start by entering the data from the first condition of your experiment into the second
column of the data file. In this example the first condition was sugar. Each data point
from the sugar condition should be typed next to a 1 from the first column. This
configuration tells SPSS that all the data points next to a 1 are from condition 1, sugar.
Now for the next condition

When you are finished entering the data from the first condition, it is time to move on to
the second condition. Enter the data from the second condition below the data from the
first condition. Each data point from the second condition should be typed next to a 2
from the first column. This configuration tells SPSS that all the data points next to a 2
are from condition 2, no sugar.
Name the second column

Double click on the top of the second column to name it. Enter a name into the variable
name box. The second column represents your DV. Because of this, it’s a good idea to
include the letters “DV” in the name of the second column. It is also a good idea to
include the name of what is being measured. Since words are being measured in this
example, I decided to name my variable “dvwords.” Click OK when you are finished.

Almost finished

But don’t forget to save the data file to a meaningful place with a meaningful name. I
decided to name my data file “Effect of Sugar on Words Remembered Data.sav.” It’s a
long name but this file will be very easy for me to identify in the future. See how I used
the word “Data” in the name? This will help me to know that this is my data file in the
future, as compared to my output file which might have a similar name.
Data Analysis

Group Statistics Box

Take a look at the first box in your output file called Group Statistics. In the first column,
you will see the number 1 and the number 2 under the word IVSUGAR. These are the
numbers that we chose to represent our two IV conditions, sugar (1) and no sugar (2).
You can find out some descriptive statistics about each condition by reading across
each row in this box. You can also see the number of participants per condition.

Example

In the Group Statistics box, the mean for condition 1 (sugar) is 4.20. The mean for
condition 2 (no sugar) is 2.20. The standard deviation for condition 1 is 1.30 and for
condition 2, 0.84. The number of participants in each condition (N) is 5.

Why look at Group Statistics

Some students wonder why we look at this box. We are doing a T-test and this box
does not tell us the results for that test. We look at the box because it can give us some
important and relevant information.

Example

We can see how many data points were entered for each condition. If we know that we
had 5 participants per condition in our experiment, but N = 4 for condition 1 on this
printout, this would be an indication that we had not entered all of the participant data in
our data file. The condition means are also very important. They show us the magnitude
of the difference between conditions and we can see which group has a higher mean.
For example, we can see that the mean for condition1 is almost twice that of condition
2. We can see that participants in the sugar condition are remembering nearly twice the
amount of words when compared to the no sugar condition.
Independent Samples Test Box

This is the next box you will look at. At first glance, you can see a lot of information and
that might feel intimidating. But don’t worry, you actually only have to look at half of the
information in this box, either the top row or the bottom row.

Levene’s Test for Equality of Variances

To find out which row to read from, look at the large column labeled Levene’s Test for
Equality of Variances. This is a test that determines if the two conditions have about the
same or different amounts of variability between scores. You will see two smaller
columns labeled F and Sig. Look in the Sig. column. It will have one value. You will use
this value to determine which row to read from. In this example, the value in the Sig.
column is 0.26 (when rounded).
If the Sig. Value is greater than .05…

Read from the top row. A value greater than .05 means that the variability in your two
conditions is about the same. That the scores in one condition do not vary too much
more than the scores in your second condition. Put scientifically, it means that the
variability in the two conditions is not significantly different. This is a good thing. In this
example, the Sig. value is greater than .05. So, we read from the first row.

If the Sig. Value is less than or equal to .05…

Read from the bottom row. A value less than .05 means that the variability in your two
conditions is not the same. That the scores in one condition vary much more than the
scores in your second condition. Put scientifically, it means that the variability in the two
conditions is significantly different. This is a bad thing, but SPSS takes this into account
by giving you slightly different results in the second row. If the Sig. value in this example
was greater less than .05, we would have read from the second row.

So we’ve got a row

Now that we have a row to read from, it is time to look at the results for our T-test.
These results will tell us if the Means for the two groups were statistically different
(significantly different) or if they were relatively the same.

Sig (2-Tailed) value

This value will tell you if the two condition Means are statistically different. Make sure to
read from the appropriate row. In this example, the Sig (2-Tailed) value is 0.02. Recall
that we have determined that it is best to read from the top row.

If the Sig (2-Tailed) value is greater than 05…

You can conclude that there is no statistically significant difference between your two
conditions. You can conclude that the differences between condition Means are likely
due to chance and not likely due to the IV manipulation.

If the Sig (2-Tailed) value is less than or equal to .05…

You can conclude that there is a statistically significant difference between your two
conditions. You can conclude that the differences between condition Means are not
likely due to change and are probably due to the IV manipulation.
Our Example

The Sig. (2-Tailed) value in our example is 0.02. This value is less than .05. Because of
this, we can conclude that there is a statistically significant difference between the mean
number of words recalled for the sugar and no sugar conditions. Since our Group
Statistics box revealed that the Mean for the sugar condition was greater than the Mean
for the no sugar condition, we can conclude that participants in the sugar condition were
able to recall significantly more words than participants in the no sugar condition.

Three things

It’s a good idea to report three main things in an APA style results section when it
comes to t-tests. Doing so will help your reader more fully understand your results.

1. Test type and use

You want to tell your reader what type of analysis you conducted. If you don’t, your
results won’t make much sense to the reader. You also want to tell your reader why this
particular analysis was used. What did your analysis tests for?

Example

You can report data from your own experiments by using the template below.

“An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare (your DV measure)

_________ in (IV level / condition 1) ________and (IV level / condition 2)________
conditions.”

If we were reporting data for our example, we might write a sentence like this.

“An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare memory for words in sugar
and no sugar conditions.”

2. Significant differences between conditions

You want to tell your reader whether or not there was a significant difference between
condition means. You can report data from your own experiments by using the template
below.

“There was a significant (not a significant) difference in the scores for IV level 1 (M=___,
SD=___) and IV level 2 (M=___, SD=___) conditions; t(__)=____, p = ____”
Just fill in the blanks by using the SPSS output

Let’s start by filing in the Mean and Standard Deviation for each condition.

Now we’ll finish up by filling in the values related to the T-Test. Here we enter the
degrees of freedom (df), the t-value (t), and the Sig. (2-tailed) value (often referred to as
the p value).
Once the blanks are full…

You have a sentence that looks very scientific but was actually very simple to produce.

“There was a significant difference in the scores for sugar (M=4.2, SD=1.3) and no
sugar (M=2.2, SD=0.84) conditions; t (8)=2.89, p = 0.020.”

3. Report your results in words that people can understand

You have to admit, the previous sentence is pretty intimidating. It might be hard for
someone to figure out what that sentence means or how it relates to your experiment.
That’s why it’s a good idea to report you results in an easy to understand language,
after you have stated them scientifically. Imagine that you were trying to explain these
results to a family member or friend who does not know much about science.

Example

You might write something like this for our example.

“These results suggest that sugar really does have an effect on memory for words.
Specifically, our results suggest that when humans consume sugar, they remember
more words.”
This sentence is so much easier to understand than the one will all of the numbers in it.

All together now

When you put the three main components together, results look something like this.

“An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare memory for words in sugar
and no sugar conditions. There was a significant difference in the scores for sugar
(M=4.2, SD=1.3) and no sugar (M=2.2, SD=0.84) conditions; t (8)=2.89, p = 0.20. These
results suggest that sugar really does have an effect on memory for words. Specifically,
our results suggest that when humans consume sugar, their memory for words
increases.”

Looks pretty good huh? This isn’t so hard after all.