ANOVA IN SPSS

The one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) is used to determine whether there are any
significant differences between the means of two or more independent (unrelated) groups
(although you tend to only see it used when there are a minimum of three, rather than two
groups).

o Assumption #1: Your dependent variable should be measured at the interval or ratio
level (i.e., they are continuous). Examples of variables that meet this criterion include
revision time (measured in hours), intelligence (measured using IQ score), exam
performance (measured from 0 to 100), weight (measured in kg), and so forth. You can
learn more about interval and ratio variables in our article:Types of Variable.
o Assumption #2: Your independent variable should consist of two or more
categorical, independent groups. Typically, a one-way ANOVA is used when you
have three or more categorical, independent groups, but it can be used for just two
groups (but an independent-samples t-test is more commonly used for two groups).
Example independent variables that meet this criterion include ethnicity (e.g., 3 groups:
Caucasian, African American and Hispanic), physical activity level (e.g., 4 groups:
sedentary, low, moderate and high), profession (e.g., 5 groups: surgeon, doctor, nurse,
dentist, therapist), and so forth.
o Assumption #3: You should have independence of observations, which means that
there is no relationship between the observations in each group or between the groups
themselves. For example, there must be different participants in each group with no
participant being in more than one group. This is more of a study design issue than
something you can test for, but it is an important assumption of the one-way ANOVA. If
your study fails this assumption, you will need to use another statistical test instead of the
one-way ANOVA (e.g., a repeated measures design). If you are unsure whether your
study meets this assumption, you can use our Statistical Test Selector, which is part of
our enhanced guides.
o Assumption #4: There should be no significant outliers. Outliers are simply single data
points within your data that do not follow the usual pattern (e.g., in a study of 100
students' IQ scores, where the mean score was 108 with only a small variation between
students, one student had a score of 156, which is very unusual, and may even put her in
the top 1% of IQ scores globally). The problem with outliers is that they can have a
negative effect on the one-way ANOVA, reducing the validity of your results.
Fortunately, when using SPSS to run a one-way ANOVA on your data, you can easily
detect possible outliers. In our enhanced one-way ANOVA guide, we: (a) show you how
to detect outliers using SPSS; and (b) discuss some of the options you have in order to
deal with outliers. You can learn more about our enhanced one-way ANOVA guide here.
o Assumption #5: Your dependent variable should be approximately normally
distributed for each category of the independent variable. We talk about the one-way
ANOVA only requiring approximately normal data because it is quite "robust" to
violations of normality, meaning that assumption can be a little violated and still provide
 valid results. You can test for normality using the Shapiro-Wilk test of normality, which
is easily tested for using SPSS. In addition to showing you how to do this in our enhanced
one-way ANOVA guide, we also explain what you can do if your data fails this
assumption (i.e., if it fails it more than a little bit). Again, you can learn more here.
o Assumption #6: There needs to be homogeneity of variances. You can test this
assumption in SPSS using Levene's test for homogeneity of variances. If your data fails
this assumption, you will need to not only carry out a Welch ANOVA instead of a one-
way ANOVA, which you can do using SPSS, but also use a different post-hoc test. In our
enhanced one-way ANOVA guide, we (a) show you how to perform Levene’s test for
homogeneity of variances in SPSS, (b) explain some of the things you will need to
consider when interpreting your data, and (c) present possible ways to continue with your
analysis if your data fails to meet this assumption, including running a Welch ANOVA in
SPSS instead of a one-way ANOVA, and a Games-Howell test instead of a Tukey post-
hoc test (learn morehere).

Example:

A manager wants to raise the productivity at his company by increasing the speed at
which his employees can use a particular spreadsheet program. As he does not have the
skills in-house, he employs an external agency which provides training in this
spreadsheet program. They offer 3 courses: a beginner, intermediate and advanced
course. He is unsure which course is needed for the type of work they do at his
company, so he sends 10 employees on the beginner course, 10 on the intermediate and
10 on the advanced course. When they all return from the training, he gives them a
problem to solve using the spreadsheet program, and times how long it takes them to
complete the problem. He then compares the three courses (beginner, intermediate,
advanced) to see if there are any differences in the average time it took to complete the
problem.

1. Click Analyze > Compare Means > One-Way ANOVA..

2. Transfer the dependent variable ( Time ) into the Dependent List: box and the
independent variable ( Course ) into the Factor:box using the
appropriate buttons (or drag-and-drop the variables into the boxes), as
indicted in the diagram below:

3. Click the button. Tick the Tukey

4. Click the button.

5. Click the button. Tick the Descriptive checkbox in the –Statistics–

6. Click the button

7. Click the button.

SPSS Output of the one-way ANOVA

ANOVA Table
Multiple Comparisons Table

Reporting the output of the one-way ANOVA

There was a statistically significant difference between groups as