Terminology: Statistical Tests - T-test (for two independent samples)

Hello all, Chris here. There are a great variety of statistical tests used in linguistics and SLA studies and knowing the difference between one test and another can be quite confusing, especially for those new to the field. To help alleviate some of the confusion I will start a series of posts, each of which will briefly examine a different type of statistical test. We hope that you find these definitions useful! Questions and comments are welcome!

First up, we will look at the T-test. The T-test is a test which is typically used in SLA studies to compare the mean scores from two independent populations in order to determine whether the two averages are statistically different from one another.