The Survey of Study Habits and Attitudes (SSHA) is a psychological test that measures the motivation, attitude, and study habits of college students. Scores range from 0 to 200 and follow (approximately) a normal distribution with mean of 115 and standard deviation $\sigma$ = 25. You suspect that incoming freshman have a mean $\mu$ which is different than 115, because they are often excited yet anxious about entering college. To test your suspicion, you test the hypotheses
H₀: $\mu$ = 115 H_a: $\mu$ 115.
In testing these hypotheses, which of the following would be strong evidence against the null hypothesis?

Question

The Survey of Study Habits and Attitudes (SSHA) is a psychological test that measures the motivation, attitude, and study habits of college students. Scores range from 0 to 200 and follow (approximately) a normal distribution with mean of 115 and standard deviation

\sigma

= 25. You suspect that incoming freshman have a mean

\mu

which is different than 115, because they are often excited yet anxious about entering college. To test your suspicion, you test the hypotheses
H₀:

\mu

= 115 H_a:

\mu

115.
In testing these hypotheses, which of the following would be strong evidence against the null hypothesis?

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Obtaining data with a small P-value would be strong evidence against the null hypothesis. A small P-value indicates that the observed difference between the sample mean and the hypothesized population mean (115) is unlikely to have occurred by chance alone, supporting the alternative hypothesis that the population mean is different from 115. The choice of significance level (A and B) does not affect the evidence against the null hypothesis, but only the risk of making a type I error (rejecting the null hypothesis when it is actually true). The magnitude of the P-value is more informative than the significance level in hypothesis testing.

The Survey of Study Habits and Attitudes (SSHA) Is a Psychological