Simple random samples of 350 women and 450 men from Michigan are obtained.The 800 people in the sample are categorized according to where they went to school: in state,out of state,or no college. The SPSS output for the above table is given below.The output includes the cell counts and the most expected cell counts.Expected counts are printed below observed counts. What would be the null hypothesis for a chi-square test based on these data?
A)College location and gender are independent.
B)The average college location is the same for men and women.
C)The distribution of college location is the same for men and women.
D)The distribution of gender is different for the three different college locations.

Question

Simple random samples of 350 women and 450 men from Michigan are obtained.The 800 people in the sample are categorized according to where they went to school: in state,out of state,or no college.  The SPSS output for the above table is given below.The output includes the cell counts and the most expected cell counts.Expected counts are printed below observed counts.  What would be the null hypothesis for a chi-square test based on these data?
A)College location and gender are independent. 
B)The average college location is the same for men and women. 
C)The distribution of college location is the same for men and women. 
D)The distribution of gender is different for the three different college locations.

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The null hypothesis for a chi-square test is always that the distribution in one variable is independent of another variable. In this case, the null hypothesis would be that the distribution of college location (in state, out of state, or no college) is the same for men and women, since we are testing whether the two variables are independent of each other. Therefore, the best choice is C, which states exactly this. The other choices do not accurately reflect the null hypothesis for this test.

Simple Random Samples of 350 Women and 450 Men from Michigan