# $2$-step (paired) t-test - or what?

The situation is as follows:
there is a certain method to cure some physical problem, measured metrically by cm (say growth of bones, angle of mobility of an arm or whatever (don't want to disclose the actual item here)). We have, per subject, two measures: status before intervention/cure and status after intervention.

There are 50 people treated/tested and the differences "cm_after_treat - cm_before_treat" are evaluated by a paired t-test, finding some average improvement of the test-item, and a significance indication with $$p \lt 0.05$$ .

But now, there are two concuring methods of intervention, taken in two subsets of clients. We want to test, whether the difference of the improvements by method_1 is better than by method_2. Because this subgroups are independent, one would think of a second t-test, this time not the paired one.

Would one possibly apply a "2-sample" t-test on the calculated individual differences/improvements "cm_after - cm_before"?
Or would one apply a procedure from the wider portfolio of variance-analysis here ("Oneway" "Anova" "..." - I'm likely talking in the jargon of SPSS here, thus SPSS as tag might be appropriate for the question) on the two items "test_before", "test_after" with a 2-level-factor "method"?

Maybe this is a rather trivial question but I feel no more fluent with this after a couple of years of distance to concrete application of statistical testing.

• 1. What number of patients receive a: method_1 only, b: method_2 only c: both methods, and d: no method at all? 2. Is receipt of "method" randomized? Apr 21 at 21:36
• @AdamO : about 60 are treated with method 1, about 40 are treated with method 2. Whether the application of the method is correlated/dependent on further external variables (sex, financial potence, age,... ) I don't know yet (it is not my own study, I've simply been informally consulted about). Your answer seems to solve the problem, btw. and is "accepted". Apr 22 at 8:14