Question

An experiment is designed to compare the average salaries of employees in a particular position in two competing companies. The null hypothesis is assumed to be that there is no difference in the average salaries of employees in a particular position in the two companies. What is the alternative hypothesis?

Answer 1

If the null hyp. assumes equal average salaries (i.e. no difference), then the alternative can take on three cases: (1) one mean is greater than the other, (2), one mean is small than the other, or (3) the means are not equal. (1) and (2) sound the same, so I should be more precise. If μ1 is supposed to be the average for one company, and μ2 the average for the other, then (1) would indicate μ1>μ2, while (2) would represent the case that μ1<μ2.

Answer 2

The alternative hypothesis is there is a (significant) difference between the average salaries of employees in the two companies.

The alternative hypothesis is the hypothesis that is validated when the null hypothesis fails to be supported.

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