Score Variance between Online and Face-to-Face Participant Groups within

The first three null hypotheses make an assumption that there is no significant difference in the level of awareness gain between the Online and the Face-to-Face participants on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Tests. In order to test if these hypothesized assumptions are true, the means of the weighted scores of the two groups of participants are statistically compared using an Independent Two Sample t-Test (Cohen, Manion and Morrison, 2011) after having verified that both datasets meet the normality and variance equality assumptions required by the Independent Samples t-Test. The Independent Two Sample t-Test is conducted three times comparing the two groups’ scores once for the 1st Test, then the 2nd Test and finally for the 3rd Test: The results of these tests are as follows.

H1: Comparing Datasets 2 and 3

Null Hypothesis (H1a): There is no significant difference between the mean scores of the Online Group and the Face-to-Face Group on the 1st Test.

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Test Results: Since the Face-to-Face and Online Groups’ scores on the 1st _{Test have}

been verified to have an acceptable level of normal distribution and the results of the F-Test on the compared datasets indicated unequal variance, a two tailed Two Sample t-test assuming unequal variances is conducted. The test shows that (p (two tailed) = 0.60 > a = 0.05, t statistic = -0.518, df = 97) as in Table 16. In conclusion, the results support the null hypothesis (H1a) that there is no significant difference between the mean scores of the Online Group (M = 0.65. SD= 0.14) and the Face-to-Face Group (M = 0.63. SD= 0.19) on the 1st Test and hence the Alternate hypothesis (H1b) is rejected.

Table 16 - Two Sample t-test Assuming Unequal Variances Comparing Face-to-Face and Online Groups' scores on 1st Test

H2: Comparing Datasets 5 and 6

Null Hypothesis (H2a): There is no significant difference between the mean scores of the Online Group and the Face-to-Face Group on the 2nd Test.

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Test Results: Since the Face-to-Face and Online Groups’ scores on the 2nd _{Test have}

been verified to have an acceptable level of normal distribution and equal variances, a two tailed Two Sample t-test assuming equal variances is conducted as shown in Table 17. The test results indicated that there is no significant difference between the mean scores of the F2F Participants Group (M= 1.09. SD= 0.54) and the Online Participants Group (M=1.29, SD= 0.54) on the 2nd Test where (p (two tailed) = 0.07 > a = 0.05, t statistic = -1.80, df = 98). Hence, the results support the Null hypothesis (H2a) and thus the Alternate hypothesis (H2b) is rejected.

Table 17 - Using t-Test to compare Face-to-Face and Online groups' scores on 2nd Test

H3: Comparing Datasets 8 and 9

Null Hypothesis (H3a): There is no significant difference between the mean scores of the Online Group and the Face-to-Face Group on the 3rd Test.

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Test Results: Since the Face-to-Face and Online Groups’ scores on the 3rd _{Test have}

been verified to have an acceptable level of normal distribution and the results of the F-Test on the compared datasets indicated unequal variance, a two tailed Two Sample t-test assuming unequal variances is conducted. The test results indicated that there is no significant difference between the mean scores of the Face-to-Face participant group (M = 0.91. SD= 0.62) and the Online participant group (M = 1.08, SD= 0.48) on the 3rd Test where (p (two tailed) = 0.12 > a = 0.05, t statistic = -1.54, df = 96) as in Table 18. In conclusion, the results of the test conducted support the null hypothesis (H3a) that there is no significant difference between the mean scores of the Online Group and the Face-to-Face Group on the 3rd Test and hence the Alternate hypothesis (H3b) is rejected.

Table 18 - Two Sample t-test assuming unequal variances comparing Face-to-Face and Online Groups' scores on 3rd Test

In summary as in Table 19 below, the 3 hypotheses (H1, H2 and H3) were tested to determine if there was a statistically significant difference between the Face-to-Face participants and the Online participants in acquired awareness as reflected by their scores on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Tests respectively. The tests’ results show that there was no significance difference in the level of awareness gained between the two groups on the 1st, 2nd and the 3rd Tests. It is noted that H1, H2 and H3 have different degrees of freedom despite the compared samples are the same in number. This is due to the differences in variances and standard deviations of the two samples. For example, H2

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has equal variances where degrees of freedom are always rendered the same following the formula ((n1 + n2) – 2). On the other hand, H1 and H3 have unequal variances and therefore, the formula tends to give different results depending on how large or small the differences between the standard deviations of the two samples. MS Excel data analysis tool was used to generate these tests where it tends to round off the degrees of freedom to the next integer in case of unequal variances (Real.Statistics.com, 2017).

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Table 19 - Results Summary of H1, H2 and H3

5.16 Score Variance between Assessment Tests for each Participant