Assumption of normality.pptVIP

Social Work Statistics Assumption of normality Assumption of normality Transformations Assumption of normality script Practice problems Assumption of Normality Many of the statistical methods that we will apply require the assumption that a variable or variables are normally distributed. With multivariate statistics, the assumption is that the combination of variables follows a multivariate normal distribution. Since there is not a direct test for multivariate normality, we generally test each variable individually and assume that they are multivariate normal if they are individually normal, though this is not necessarily the case. Evaluating normality There are both graphical and statistical methods for evaluating normality. Graphical methods include the histogram and normality plot. Statistical methods include diagnostic hypothesis tests for normality, and a rule of thumb that says a variable is reasonably close to normal if its skewness and kurtosis have values between –1.0 and +1.0. None of the methods is absolutely definitive. Transformations When a variable is not normally distributed, we can create a transformed variable and test it for normality. If the transformed variable is normally distributed, we can substitute it in our analysis. Three common transformations are: the logarithmic transformation, the square root transformation, and the inverse transformation. All of these change the measuring scale on the horizontal axis of a histogram to produce a transformed variable that is mathematically equivalent to the original variable. When transformations do not work When none of the transformations induces normality in a variable, including that variable in the analysis will reduce our effectiveness at identifying statistical relationships, i.e. we lose power. We do have the option of changing the way the information in the variable is represented, e.g. substitute several dichotomous variables for a single metric variable. Problem 1 In the dataset