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In an experiment, 20 project experts (10 from technical roles and 10 from non-technical roles) were instructed to estimate the effort required to complete a web development project.They could use their prefered estimation strategy. They each provided effort estimations in work-hours.

There is a hypothesis, that technical roles provide more optimistic effort estimates than experts in non-technical roles. How could that hypothesis be statistically proven with the available data?

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  • $\begingroup$ You might want to provide more information on the data you have. How was effort measured? How many people were asked? $\endgroup$
    – elevendollar
    Commented Jan 16, 2015 at 8:42
  • $\begingroup$ Please explain what you understand thus far & where you are stuck. Then we will provide hints to help you get unstuck. $\endgroup$
    – gung - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jan 26, 2015 at 3:28

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Depending on wheather the variances in your groups (technical / non-technical) can be assumed to be equal you can use Student's t-test or Welch's t test to test if the means of both groups are significantly different.

Equal Variances: Student's t-test / Unequal Variances: Welch's t test

To test if the variances can be assumed to be equal you can use Levene's test. Another test you could use is Bartlett's test.

Because you have a directed hypothesis (mean of technical < mean of non-technical) you have to use the one-tailed test.

Have a look at the wiki pages for the Student's t-test and Welch's t test for more information.

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  • $\begingroup$ I also added information on using one-tailed test because your hypothesis has a direction. $\endgroup$
    – elevendollar
    Commented Jan 16, 2015 at 10:50

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