A few things 1) Why have you categorized age ? I hesitate to use the word 'never' with regard to statistical analyses, but this is RARELY a good idea, and only when you have strong substantive reasons for doing so. There are numerous papers demonstrating this, but, briefly, suppose that your age categories are 0-12 13-18 19-24 25-65 66 and over
then you are saying that a 12 year old is just like a 2 year old, and very different from a 13 year old. If your data was given to you categorized like this, and you don't have access to the original data, then you have my sympathy. 2) Given ordered data (like the cateogires of age) there are better methods than the usual chi-square. This chi-square ignores the ordering of the data, and treats it as categorical (so, if you had categories like 'race' or 'religion' where there is no natural ordering, they would be appropriate). To do this simply, I would use a test for trend. 3) I would LOOK at the freqencies and see what there is to see. You might want to post the 5 x 2 table here - then WE could see what you are looking at. HTH Peter Peter L. Flom, PhD Assistant Director, Statistics and Data Analysis Core Center for Drug Use and HIV Research National Development and Research Institutes 71 W. 23rd St www.peterflom.com New York, NY 10010 (212) 845-4485 (voice) (917) 438-0894 (fax) >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 4/30/2004 9:17:12 AM >>> Hi, I think I've mastered the chi square test, but not too sure about its outcome and if I have used it appropriately. I have 5 age groups with yes/no response data, is a 5x2 chi square test the test to choose to check for differences between age groups for the question? I have found no statistical significant difference by completeing this table(i.e. the chi value was not high enough for the p=0.5 threshold). Can I say the yes/no responses between age groups are not statistically different? Thanks for any help, it will be most appreciated, Katie x . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . ================================================================= . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
