Let us recall.

Analysis of Variance
(ANOVA):
Difference Among Three
or More Conditions
Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)
The one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) is
used to determine whether there are any
statistically significant differences between the
means of two or more independent (unrelated)
groups (although you tend to only see it used
when there are a minimum of three, rather
than two groups).
For example

You could use a one-way ANOVA to understand

whether exam performance differed based on
test anxiety levels amongst students, dividing
students into three independent groups (e.g., low,
 medium and high-stressed students).
Note:
One-way ANOVA is an omnibus test statistic and
cannot tell you which specific groups were
statistically significantly different from each other; it
only tells you that at least two groups were
different. Since you may have three, four, five or
more groups in your study design, determining
which of these groups differ from each other is
important. You can do this using a post hoc test.
Note:
If your study design not only involves one
dependent variable and one independent variable,
but also a third variable (known as a "covariate")
that you want to "statistically control", you may
need to perform an ANCOVA (analysis of
covariance), which can be thought of as an
extension of the one-way ANOVA.
The assumptions
1. Your dependent variable should be measured
 on a continuous scale (i.e., it is measured at
the interval or ratio level).
2. Your independent variable should consist
of two or more categorical, independent
groups.
3.You should have independence of
observations which means that there is no
relationship between the observations in each
group or between the groups themselves.
The assumptions
4.There should be no significant outliers.

5. Your dependent variable should

be approximately normally distributed for
eachcategory of the independent variable.

6. There needs to be homogeneity of variances

(using Levene’s Test)
Let’s take a hypothetical case…
•Subjects: 25 patients with blisters
•Treatments: Treatment A, Treatment B, Placebo
•Measurement: # of days until blisters heal
•Data [and means]:
• A: 5,6,6,7,7,8,9,10 [7.25] • B:
7,7,8,9,9,10,10,11 [8.875] • P:
7,9,9,10,10,10,11,12,13 [10.11]
•Are these differences significant?
Informal Investigation
•Graphical investigation:
• side-by-side box plots
• multiple histograms

•Whether the differences between the groups are

significant depends on
• the difference in the means
• the standard deviations of each group •
the sample sizes
Side by Side Boxplots
 13

12

11

10

s
9
y

ABP
treatment

Solution
Problem: Is there a significant difference on the
number of days until the blisters heal among the three
treatments?
Null H: There is no significant difference on the average
number of days until the blisters heal among the three
treatments.
Alternative H: At least one of the means significantly
differ among the three treatments.
Set significance level at 5%.
Test Procedure in SPSS (One-Way ANOVA)
Test Procedure in SPSS (One-Way
ANOVA)

Test Procedure in SPSS (One-Way ANOVA)

Test Procedure in SPSS (One-Way
ANOVA)
Test Procedure in SPSS (One-Way ANOVA)
Test Procedure in SPSS (One-Way

ANOVA)
Interpreting the SPSS Statistics Output (One-Way ANOVA)

SPSS Statistics generates quite a few tables in

its one-way ANOVA analysis. We show you
only the main tables required to understand
your results from the one-way ANOVA and
Tukey post hoc test.
Interpreting the SPSS Statistics Output (One-Way ANOVA)

Descriptives Table

The descriptives table (see below) provides some very

useful descriptive statistics, including the mean,
standard deviation and 95% confidence intervals for the
dependent variable (Number of Days) for each separate
group (Treatment A, Treatment B and Placebo), as well
as when all groups are combined (Total).
Interpreting the SPSS Statistics Output (One-Way

ANOVA) Descriptives Table

Interpreting the SPSS Statistics Output (One-Way
ANOVA) ANOVA Table
This is the table that shows the output of the
ANOVA analysis and whether there is a
 statistically significant difference among our
group means.

Interpreting the SPSS Statistics Output (One-Way ANOVA)

We can see that the significance value is 0.006 (i.e., p = .006), which is
below 0.05. and, therefore, there is a statistically significant difference
in the mean numbers of days for blisters to heal among the different
treatments taken.
Interpreting the SPSS Statistics Output (One-Way ANOVA)
 This is great to know, but we do not know which
of the specific groups differed. Luckily, we can
find this out in the Multiple
Comparisons table which contains the results
of the Tukey post hoc test.
Interpreting the SPSS Statistics Output (One-Way ANOVA)
Interpreting the SPSS Statistics Output (One-Way ANOVA)
Multiple Comparisons Table
The Tukey post hoc test is generally the preferred test for
conducting post hoc tests on a one-way ANOVA.

We can see from the table below that there is a statistically

significant difference in the healing time between the groups that
were administered with Treatment A and Placebo (p = 0.004).
However, there were no differences between the groups that
were administered with Treatment A and Treatment B (p =
0.141) ), as well as between the groups with Treatment B and
Placebo (p = 0.288).
Reporting the Result using the APA format
There was a statistically significant difference between groups
as determined by one-way ANOVA (F(2,22) = 4.467, p = .006).
A Tukey post hoc test revealed that the number of days for the
blisters to heal was statistically significantly lower with
Treatment A (7.25 ± 1.7 days, p = .004) compared to Placebo
(10.11 ± 1.7 days, p = .288). There was no statistically
significant difference between Treatment A and Treatment B
groups (8.88 ± 1.5 days, p = .141), as well as Treatment B and
Placebo groups (p = .989).
Reporting the Result using the APA format
 It is also worth noting that in addition to reporting the results
from your assumptions and ANOVA F-test, you are
increasingly expected to report effect sizes.

Effect sizes are important because whilst the Tukey test tells
you whether differences between group means are "real"
(i.e., different in the population), it does not tell you the "size"
of the difference.

Test Procedure in Excel

(ANOVA)
Assumptions of ANOVA
•each group is approximately normal
-check this by looking at histograms and/or
normal quantile plots, or use assumptions -can
handle some non-normality, but not severe
outliers
•standard deviations of each group are
approximately equal
-rule of thumb: the largest sample standard
deviation (sd) divided by the smallest sd must
 be less than 2
Normality Check
•We should check for normality using:
• assumptions about population
• histograms for each group
• normal quantile plot for each group

•With such small data sets, there really isn’t a really

good way to check normality from data, but we make
the common assumption that physical measurements
of people tend to be normally distributed.
Test Procedure in Excel (ANOVA)
1. After inputting the data as shown below, click Data,
then Data Analysis…
Test Procedure in Excel (ANOVA)
2. On the Data Analysis dialogue box, click ANOVA: Single
Factor then input data as shown below:

Test Procedure in Excel (ANOVA)

The following summary table gives us the mean and variance
of the three groups.

Test Procedure in Excel (ANOVA)

The following ANOVA table will now guide us in our decision
making process.

Using two-tailed test, we obtain a p-value of 0.006256

which is less than 0.05 (significance level).
Thus, we reject the null hypothesis.
(Note that we get the same decision using the SPSS)
Decision: Reject the null hypothesis at 1% and 5% level of significance

There is a significant difference among the means.

Test Procedure in Excel (ANOVA)
This is great to know, but we do not know which of the
specific groups differed.

Once ANOVA indicates that the groups do not all have the
same means, we can compare them two by two using the 2-
sample t test

We need to adjust our p-value threshold because we are

doing multiple tests with the same data.
 Let’s try another one!
• Suppose we have three groups
• Group 1: 5.3, 6.0, 6.7
• Group 2: 5.5, 6.2, 6.4, 5.7
• Group 3: 7.5, 7.2, 7.9
• We get the following statistics:
SUMMARY

Groups Count Sum Average Variance

Column 1 3 18 6 0.49 Column 2 4 23.8 5.95
 0.176667 Column 3 3 22.6 7.533333 0.123333
P-value is significant both
Excel ANOVA at 1% and 5% level of
significance
Output ANOVA
Source of Variation S S df MS F P-value F crit Between Groups
5.127333 2 2.563667 10.21575 0.008394 4.737416 Within
Groups 1.756667 7 0.250952

Total 6.884 9
(equals df for each group added
1 less than number of groups together)
number of data values - number of
groups
1 less than number of
individuals (just like other
situations)