A researcher gathered evidence about the number of times different age students consult the internet to check facts for research reports. Participants between 10 and 15 years old consulted the internet an average of 10.1 times during the research report, and participants between 15 and 25 years old averaged 7.3 times. Explain what “statistical significance” would mean in the context of this study.

Answer/Explanation:

Statistical significance would mean that the researcher carried out the appropriate statistical tests to confirm that the difference between the two age groups was unlikely to be a result of chance.

Likely, a researcher would want the p value (probability value) to be less than 0.05, which means there is only a 5% chance that these observations are random.

The test a researcher would likely perform to test statistical significance on this data is an unpaired t test, which compares the averages of two independent groups to see whether there is a significant difference between them.