General Procedure for Test of Hypotheses

GENERAL PROCEDURE FOR TEST OF HYPOTHESES

The following steps constitute a general procedure, which can be followed for solving hypotheses testing problems based on both large and small samples.

Step 1 : Describe the population and its parameter(s). Frame the null hypothesis (H₀) and alternative hypothesis (H₁).

Step 2 : Describe the sample i.e., data.

Step 3 : Specify the desired level of significance, α.

Step 4 : Specify the test statistic and its sampling distribution under H₀.

Step 5 : Calculate the value of the test statistic under H₀ for given sample.

Step 6 : Find the critical value(s) (table value(s)) from the statistical table generated from the sampling distribution of the test statistic under H₀ corresponding to α.

Step 7 : Decide on rejecting or not rejecting the null hypothesis based on the rejection rule which compares the calculated value(s) of the test statistic with the table value(s).

Now, let us see some of the large sample tests, which apply the above general procedure. As mentioned in Note-6, for large samples, the size of the sample is greater than or equal to 30. In the case of two samples considered for a hypotheses testing problem, the test is a large sample test, when the sizes of both the samples are greater than or equal to 30.