The Mann-Whitney U: A Test for Assessing Whether Two Independent Samples Come from the Same Distribution

It is often difficult, particularly when conducting research in psychology, to have access to large normally distributed samples. Fortunately, there are statistical tests to compare two independent groups that do not require large normally distributed samples. The Mann-Whitney U is one of these test...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Tutorials in quantitative methods for psychology Vol. 4; no. 1; pp. 13 - 20
Main Author:	Nachar, Nadim
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Université d'Ottawa 01.03.2008
Subjects:	Mann-Whitney test Statistics
ISSN:	1913-4126, 1913-4126
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	It is often difficult, particularly when conducting research in psychology, to have access to large normally distributed samples. Fortunately, there are statistical tests to compare two independent groups that do not require large normally distributed samples. The Mann-Whitney U is one of these tests. In the following work, a summary of this test is presented. The explanation of the logic underlying this test and its application are presented. Moreover, the forces and weaknesses of the Mann-Whitney U are mentioned. One major limit of the Mann-Whitney U is that the type I error or alpha (?) is amplified in a situation of heteroscedasticity.
ISSN:	1913-4126 1913-4126
DOI:	10.20982/tqmp.04.1.p013