A powerful women's group has claimed that men and women differ in attitudes about sexual discrimination. A group of 50 men (group 1) and 40 women (group 2) were asked if they thought sexual discrimination is a problem in the United States. Of those sampled, 11 of the men and 19 of the women did believe that sexual discrimination is a problem. Which of the following tests will you use to find out if there is any difference in attitudes about sexual discrimination?
A) pooled-variance t test
B) Z test for difference in proportions
C) Wilcoxon rank sum test
D) paired t test

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The Z test for difference in proportions is the best choice to compare attitudes about sexual discrimination between the two groups. This is because we are comparing two proportions (the proportion of men who believe sexual discrimination is a problem and the proportion of women who believe sexual discrimination is a problem) in two independent groups. The sample sizes are large enough to assume that the sampling distribution of the sample proportions is approximately normal, allowing us to use a Z test. The other tests listed are not appropriate for this scenario: the pooled-variance t test is used for comparing means, the Wilcoxon rank sum test is used for non-parametric data, and the paired t test is used for paired data.

A Powerful Women's Group Has Claimed That Men and Women