Tips to Choose the Right Statistical Test for Your Research

With a wide range of statistical tests available to analyze and interpret your research data, it becomes difficult to choose the best-suited test for your study design. Though it is a tricky situation to find and select the best test for comparing measurements, you may still follow certain tips while making your choice. First, you might like to consider if a parametric or nonparametric family of tests would suit the design of your study. While parametric tests are based on the assumption that data sampling is done from a Gaussian distribution, nonparametric tests are not based on assumptions related to population distribution. Some common examples of parametric tests are T test, one-way ANOVA, and linear and nonlinear regression. Nonparametric tests examples include Wilcoxon test, Mann-Whitney test, Kruskal-Wallis test, Friedman test and Spearman correlation. Thus, it is an easy choice to go for parametric tests if your data sampling is done from a population following a Gaussian distribution. A nonparametric test can be selected if your population does not follow a Gaussian distribution or your outcome is a score or rank. It can also be selected when some values are too low or too high to measure. Sometimes, it is not easy to check whether a sample comes from a population following a Gaussian distribution or not. In such a case, you should look at the overall data and not just the data for the current experiment. If there are multiple sources causing scatter, then it could be a case of Gaussian distribution. However, if you are in doubt, go by your best judgment for selecting a parametric or nonparametric test. Another aspect that you should consider while selecting a test is your sample size. Large samples would generally cause no issues if you use any of the above-mentioned tests. Thus, take care while choosing the test for a small sample size. Further, you should choose a test after deciding to calculate a P value that is either one-sided or two-sided. Go for a one-sided test before collecting any data and after deciding the direction of your hypothesis. If you are curious about the data that goes another way, opt for a two-sided test. Apart from this, consider if your values represent measurements on matched subjects or repeated measurements on a single subject. If any of these is the case, you should prefer a paired or repeated measures test. However, compare the groups using an unpaired test if individual values are not matched with one another. Thus, these are some of the tips that might help you select the right test for your study. If you are unsure of various statistical procedures and intricacies, you might opt to take help from the expert statisticians working with various companies like www.statworkz.com that provide dissertation statistics and data analysis support.