Question

Here is more practice. Read the scenarios below and decide if the researcher should reject or fail to reject the null hypothesis. Remember to explain your responses. a) Researcher sets alpha level (level of significance) at 0.05, and the p-value is 0.03, based on the sample data.

Answer 1

When the p-value of 0.03 is less than the alpha level of 0.05, the null hypothesis is rejected, suggesting evidence for the alternative hypothesis is statistically significant.

Step-by-step explanation:

The student's question pertains to hypothesis testing in statistics. When a researcher sets an alpha level (level of significance) at 0.05, and the obtained p-value based on sample data is 0.03, the appropriate course of action would be to reject the null hypothesis. This decision is made because the p-value (0.03) is less than the significance level (α = 0.05). This indicates that the observed data is statistically significant, and there is enough evidence to suggest the alternative hypothesis may be true.

If the p-value was greater than or equal to the alpha level, the decision would instead be to fail to reject the null hypothesis, implying insufficient evidence to support the alternative hypothesis at the 5 percent significance level.