Kruskal

Kruskal-Wallis H test
 is used to determine whether or not there is a statistically significant difference
between the medians of three or more independent groups.
 Like most statistical test you calculate a test statistic and compare it to a
distribution cut-off point.
 this test is the non parametric equivalent of the one-way ANOVA and is typically
used when the normality assumption is violated.
 The Kruskal-Wallis H. test does not assume normality in the data and is much
less sensitive to outliers than the one-way ANOVA
The hyphothesis for the test are:
-H0: population medians are equal
-H1: population medians are not equal
We can use Kruskal Wallis H test for example when:
 Comparing Study Techniques

Example:
You randomly split up a class of 90 students into three groups of 30. Each group uses
a different studying technique for one month to prepare for an exam.
At the end of the month, all of the students take the same exam. You want to know
whether or not the studying technique has an impact on exam scores.
Addition/Explanation
(From previous studies you know that the distributions of exam scores for these three
studying techniques are not normally distributed so you conduct a Kruskal-Wallis test
to determine if there is a statistically significant difference between the median scores
of the three groups.)
Kruskal-Wallis Test Assumptions

Before we can conduct a Kruskal-Wallis test, we need to make sure the following
assumptions are met:
1. Ordinal or Nominal Response Variable
The response variable should be an ordinal or nominal variable.
( An example of an ordinal variable is a survey response question measured on a
Likert Scale example. a 5-point scale from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”)
and an example of a nominal variable is gender if it’s a male or female.)
2. Independence
Your observations should be independent , there should be no relationship between
the members in each groups.
(The observations in each group need to be independent of each other. )
3. Distributions have similar shapes

The distributions in each group need to have a similar shape.
Add/Expl
(If these assumptions are met, then we can proceed with conducting a Kruskal-Wallis
test.)
Example of a Kruskal-Wallis Test

A researcher wants to know whether or not three drugs have different effects on knee
pain, so he recruits 30 individuals who all experience similar knee pain and randomly
splits them up into three groups to receive either Drug 1, Drug 2, or Drug 3.
After one month of taking the drug, the researcher asks each individual to rate their
knee pain on a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 indicating the most severe pain.
The ratings for all 30 individuals are shown below:
Drug 1Drug 2Drug 3

78 71 57
65 66 88
63 56 58
44 40 78
50 55 65
78 31 61
70 45 62
61 66 44
50 47 48
44 42 77
Add/Expl
(The researcher wants to know whether or not the three drugs have different effects on
knee pain, so he conducts a Kruskal-Wallis Test using a .05 significance level to
determine if there is a statistically significant difference between the median knee
pain ratings across these three groups.)
We can use the following steps to perform the Kruskal-Wallis Test
Step 1. State the hypotheses.

The null hypothesis (H0): The median knee-pain ratings across the three groups are
equal.
The alternative hypothesis: (Ha): At least one of the median knee-pain ratings is
different from the others.
Step 2. Perform the Kruskal-Wallis Test.

To conduct a Kruskal-Wallis Test, the test is denoted as H and defined as
Where:
k=the number of comparison groups
N= the total sample size
nj = the sample size in the jth group and
Rj = the sum of the ranks in the jth group
Add/Expl
(We can simply compute this through Kruskal Wallis H test calculator just enter the values
and press calculate )
We have H statistics = 3.08903

P value = 0.21342
Step 3. Interpret the results.

Since the p-value of the test (0.21342) is not less than 0.05, we fail to reject the null
hypothesis.
We do not have sufficient evidence to say that there is a statistically significant
difference between the median knee pain ratings across these three groups
Review of Related Literature
BMC Medical Research Methodology (2021), The interval-valued data often

contain uncertainty and imprecision and often arise from situations that contain
vagueness and ambiguity. In this research, a modified form of the Kruskal-Wallis
H test has been proposed for indeterminacy data. A comprehensive theoretical
methodology with an application and implementation of the test has been
proposed in the research. The study results suggested that the proposed modified
Kruskal-Wallis H test is more suitable in interval-valued data situations. The
application of this new neutrosophic Kruskal-Wallis test on the Covid-19 data set
showed that the proposed test provides more relevant and adequate results. The
data representing the daily ICU occupancy by the Covid-19 patients were
recorded for both determinate and indeterminate parts.
Computer Methods Programs Biomed (1986),Multiple t tests at a fixed p level

are frequently used to analyse biomedical data where analysis of variance
followed by multiple comparisons or the adjustment of the p values according to
Bonferroni would be more appropriate. The Kruskal-Wallis test is a nonparametric
'analysis of variance' which may be used to compare several independent
samples. The present program is written in an elementary subset of BASIC and
will perform Kruskal-Wallis test followed by multiple comparisons between the
groups on practically any computer programmable in BASIC.
Phys Ther (1997 ),When several treatment methods are available for the same
problem, many clinicians are faced with the task of deciding which treatment to
use. Many clinicians may have conducted informal "mini-experiments" on their
own to determine which treatment is best suited for the problem. These results
are usually not documented or reported in a formal manner because many
clinicians feel that they are "statistically challenged."
According to Ogura, T. and Shiraishi (2022),Age is frequently transformed to
binary data in clinical trials using the cutoff value. Age and outcome, however,
might not be associated when looking at a scatter plot for a group of patients
whose ages are greater than or equal to the cutoff value. The elder of the two
groups may appear to be at reduced risk if the group whose age is more than or
equal to the cutoff value is further separated into two groups. In this instance, it
could be required to further split the group of patients whose ages are greater
than or equal to the cutoff value into two groups. This study offers a strategy for
deciding which of the two or three groups makes the optimal split. the
subsequent
Journal of Psychosomatic Research ( 2016),We used a Kruskal Wallis test to

assess if the maximum melatonin levels, time of reaching maximum levels, ∆
melatonin levels and AUC per group differed.

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We can use Kruskal Wallis H test for example when:

 Comparing Study Techniques

Kruskal-Wallis Test Assumptions

3. Distributions have similar shapes

Example of a Kruskal-Wallis Test

Drug 1Drug 2Drug 3

We can use the following steps to perform the Kruskal-Wallis Test

Step 1. State the hypotheses.

Step 2. Perform the Kruskal-Wallis Test.

We have H statistics = 3.08903

Step 3. Interpret the results.

Review of Related Literature

BMC Medical Research Methodology (2021), The interval-valued data often

Computer Methods Programs Biomed (1986),Multiple t tests at a fixed p level

Journal of Psychosomatic Research ( 2016),We used a Kruskal Wallis test to

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