Significance tests involve a null hypothesis and an alternative hypothesis. Explain these two terms and what it means to reject and retain the null hypothesis.
What will be an ideal response?
Ans: The null hypothesis is a hypothesis about the distribution of scores from which a sample was drawn. When a statistic is deemed statistically significant, we reject the null hypothesis because it seems implausible. When we reject the null hypothesis we conclude that our prediction is supported. The alternative hypothesis (also called the research hypothesis) is also a hypothesis about the distribution of scores from which a sample was drawn. It is the alternative hypothesis that the researcher believes to be true. Retaining the null hypothesis means that it remains a plausible hypothesis about the mean of the distribution from which our sample was drawn. Retaining the null hypothesis does not mean that it is true or that we treat it as though it is true.
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