Question

A new drug is prposed to lower total cholesterol and a study is designed to evaluate the efficacy of the drug. 14 patients agree to participate in the study and are asked to take the new drug for 6 weeks. Each patient's total cholesterol level is measured before (labelled as measurement 1) and after the six weeks (labelled as measurement 2) of taking the drug. Pairwise differences of (after-before) are calculated, and a hypothesis test is conducted to evaluate if the cholesterol level after taking the drug is different from before taking the drug. Given that a p-value is calculated as 0.0797, what is the correct conclusion for this hypothesis test at the 5% significance level? The probability of failing to reject the null hypothesis is 0.0797 The probability of observing an increase in cholesterol level after the drug is 0.0797 Fail to reject the null hypothesis, there is no significant difference in cholesterol level after taking the drug. Reject the null hypothesis, there is a decrease in cholesterol level after taking the drug

Answer 1

At a 5% significance level, the correct conclusion is to fail to reject the null hypothesis since the p-value of 0.0797 is greater than 0.05, indicating no significant difference in cholesterol levels after drug intake.

Step-by-step explanation:

The p-value of 0.0797 indicates the probability of obtaining the observed results, or more extreme, if the null hypothesis were true. Given that the p-value (0.0797) is greater than the chosen alpha level of significance (0.05), we do not have sufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis at the 5% significance level. Therefore, the correct conclusion is to fail to reject the null hypothesis, which means there is no statistically significant difference in cholesterol level after taking the drug.