Question

Machiavelli is interested in how national threats to security affect how citizens view their leaders. He contacts Gallup to obtain information on President Bush's approval ratings one month before the September 11th attacks on the US and one month after the attacks. Gallup provides the data, but warns Machiavelli that (a) those who provided data prior to the attack are not the same people as those who provided data after the attack and (b) only one question was asked to measure approval and participants' responses were limited to approve of Bush's job as president, disapprove, or neither. What statistic should Machiavelli use to determine the effect the attacks had on the former president's ratings?

Group of answer choices

Independent samples t-test

Dependent samples t-test

Pearson Correlation

Chi square test of Association

Answer 1

Here, we see that, those who provided data prior to the attack are not the same people as those who provided data after the attack and only one question was asked to measure approval and participants' responses were limited to approve of Bush's job as president, disapprove, or neither. So, there were three possible responses to thequestion asked to the participants. We have to find out whether the attacks had any effect on the former president's ratings , i.e , if the responses before and after are independent of each other, we might conclude that the attacks had no effect on the ratings, and vice versa. Hence, to do this, the correct test statistic is :

Chi square test of Association