To test the effectiveness of a business school preparation course, 8 students took a general business test before and after the course. Suppose the before and after exam scores are both normally distributed. Which of the following tests will be the most appropriate?
A) pooled-variance t test
B) Wilcoxon signed rank test
C) paired t test
D) Wilcoxon rank sum test

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Since we are interested in comparing the before and after exam scores of the same group of students, we need a paired test. The paired t-test is appropriate when the data follows a normal distribution, and is commonly used for before-after studies. Therefore, the most appropriate test in this case is the paired t-test. The Wilcoxon signed rank test and Wilcoxon rank sum test are non-parametric tests that do not assume normality, but they are not appropriate in this case since the question specifies that the data is normally distributed. The pooled variance t-test requires an assumption of equal variances in the two groups, which may not be appropriate in this case.

To Test the Effectiveness of a Business School Preparation Course