Question

a researcher wants to know if the mean hours of television watched per month is different between adults and children. the researcher does not know what the standard deviation for either population is. what are the appropriate hypotheses?

Answer 1

The appropriate hypotheses for determining if there is a difference in the mean hours of television watched per month between adults and children, without known population standard deviations, are the null hypothesis stating no difference (μadults = μchildren) and the alternative hypothesis stating there is a difference (μadults ≠ μchildren).

Step-by-step explanation:

A researcher wanting to know if the mean hours of television watched per month is different between adults and children, without knowing the population standard deviations, would set up the hypotheses as follows:

• The null hypothesis (H0) would state there is no difference in the mean hours of television watched per month between adults and children. Mathematically, this can be represented as μadults = μchildren.
• The alternative hypothesis (H1 or Ha) would state that there is a difference in the mean hours of television watched per month between adults and children, which is represented as μadults ≠ μchildren.

This setup leads to a two-tailed hypothesis test since the research question is about difference rather than a specific direction of difference (more or less).