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Contingency and nonparametric tests

Nonparametric tests

Nonparametric tests are sometimes called distribution-free tests because they are based on fewer assumptions (e.g., they do not assume that the outcome is approximately normally distributed).

These include, among others: distribution free methods, which do not rely on assumptions that the data are drawn from a given probability distribution. As such it is the opposite of parametric statistics. It includes nonparametric descriptive statistics, statistical models, inference and statistical tests.

Nonparametric tests are also called distribution-free tests because they don’t assume that your data follow a specific distribution. You may have heard that you should use nonparametric tests when your data don’t meet the assumptions of the parametric test, especially the assumption about normally distributed data.

When to Use a Nonparametric Test

Nonparametric tests are sometimes called distribution-free tests because they are based on fewer assumptions (e.g., they do not assume that the outcome is approximately normally distributed). Parametric tests involve specific probability distributions (e.g., the normal distribution) and the tests involve estimation of the key parameters of that distribution (e.g., the mean or difference in means) from the sample data. The cost of fewer assumptions is that nonparametric tests are generally less powerful than their parametric counterparts (i.e., when the alternative is true, they may be less likely to reject H0).

It can sometimes be difficult to assess whether a continuous outcome follows a normal distribution and, thus, whether a parametric or nonparametric test is appropriate. There are several statistical tests that can be used to assess whether data are likely from a normal distribution. The most popular are the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, the Anderson-Darling test, and the Shapiro-Wilk test1. Each test is essentially a goodness of fit test and compares observed data to quantiles of the normal (or other specified) distribution. The null hypothesis for each test is H0: Data follow a normal distribution versus H1: Data do not follow a normal distribution. If the test is statistically significant (e.g., p<0.05), then data do not follow a normal distribution, and a nonparametric test is warranted. It should be noted that these tests for normality can be subject to low power. Specifically, the tests may fail to reject H0: Data follow a normal distribution when in fact the data do not follow a normal distribution. Low power is a major issue when the sample size is small – which unfortunately is often when we wish to employ these tests. The most practical approach to assessing normality involves investigating the distributional form of the outcome in the sample using a histogram and to augment that with data from other studies, if available, that may indicate the likely distribution of the outcome in the population.

There are some situations when it is clear that the outcome does not follow a normal distribution. These include situations:

• when the outcome is an ordinal variable or a rank,
• when there are definite outliers or
• when the outcome has clear limits of detection.

Contingency Test

Contingency tables (also called crosstabs or two-way tables) are used in statistics to summarize the relationship between several categorical variables. A contingency table is a special type of frequency distribution table, where two variables are shown simultaneously.