Independent Sample t-test

Table 1.
t-test for involvement by single-parent household
Single-Parent HouseholdMeant-statistic
Yes7.9411.5591
No6.848
Note. N=66; p<.05*, p<.01**, p<.001***

The independent variable in this analysis is if children live in a single-parent household. The item that measured this is “Does your child live in a single-parent household?” with answer choices of “yes”, “no”, and “prefer not to say”. There were no responses to the “prefer not to say” answer, leaving our independent variable with two groups for analysis. The dependent variable in this analysis is family engagement. The item that measured this is “How engaged was your family in this activity (working together)?” with answer choices on a scale of 1-10 with “0=not at all” and “10=a great amount”.

From the descriptive outcomes of our variable, the means are different. The higher mean in single-parent households for engagement (7.941) than the mean for not single-parent households for engagement (6.848) demonstrate that single-parent households have higher levels of family engagement. However, the results of our t-test demonstrate there were no significant differences between the means. The differences between the two groups of children living in single-parent households and children not living in single-parent households based on the level of family engagement was not statistically significant. The p-value was not less that .05, which means the difference in our means is not significant.