Hi all,
I've read several books but I am not sure which statistical test to apply and whether my thinking is correct so I would greatly appreciate any help.
I conducted a survey among three independent groups (managers N=110, analysts N=105 and investors N=80) and in one question I asked them to rank, based on their importance, the 5 out of 14 available financial metrics used when analyzing a company (with 1 being the most important down to 5 and leaving the other metrics blank). I then constructed scores for the responses (a rank 1 will get 5, the rank 2 will get 4 etc. and no rank 0) to establish/order which metrics are on average more important overall and for each group of respondents. Now I would like to compare the three groups for each of the 14 metrics and I am not sure which test (I use SPSS) to use and these are my thoughts.
1) I tried to use an ANOVA but since a rank could be considered an ordinal variable I am not sure it is still appropriate? As only for 4 metrics out of 14 the Levene's test was not significant, I applied the Welch Test in case of heterogeneous variances. The ANOVA showed that there were statistical differences at the p<0.05 level among the three groups for 6 out of the 14 financial metrics under study. Post-hoc (both Scheffe and Games-Howell given the unequal sample sizes and unequal variances instances) analysis indicated that there was a significant difference in means between some groups for some metrics. Is this approach correct?
2) Given the issues mentioned in point 1, I also ran the Kruskal-Wallis tests + post-hoc Dunns-Bonferroni pairwise comparisons (in the SPSS model viewer), which led me to essentially the same results. However, I am not sure that this is the right test either given the heterogeneous variances.
Which of the two options is the better one (or is there a 3rd better one)? Shall I state in my dissertation that I ran both tests?
Many thanks in advance for any help.
I've read several books but I am not sure which statistical test to apply and whether my thinking is correct so I would greatly appreciate any help.
I conducted a survey among three independent groups (managers N=110, analysts N=105 and investors N=80) and in one question I asked them to rank, based on their importance, the 5 out of 14 available financial metrics used when analyzing a company (with 1 being the most important down to 5 and leaving the other metrics blank). I then constructed scores for the responses (a rank 1 will get 5, the rank 2 will get 4 etc. and no rank 0) to establish/order which metrics are on average more important overall and for each group of respondents. Now I would like to compare the three groups for each of the 14 metrics and I am not sure which test (I use SPSS) to use and these are my thoughts.
1) I tried to use an ANOVA but since a rank could be considered an ordinal variable I am not sure it is still appropriate? As only for 4 metrics out of 14 the Levene's test was not significant, I applied the Welch Test in case of heterogeneous variances. The ANOVA showed that there were statistical differences at the p<0.05 level among the three groups for 6 out of the 14 financial metrics under study. Post-hoc (both Scheffe and Games-Howell given the unequal sample sizes and unequal variances instances) analysis indicated that there was a significant difference in means between some groups for some metrics. Is this approach correct?
2) Given the issues mentioned in point 1, I also ran the Kruskal-Wallis tests + post-hoc Dunns-Bonferroni pairwise comparisons (in the SPSS model viewer), which led me to essentially the same results. However, I am not sure that this is the right test either given the heterogeneous variances.
Which of the two options is the better one (or is there a 3rd better one)? Shall I state in my dissertation that I ran both tests?
Many thanks in advance for any help.
