The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) cares about success for athletes both in their sports and in their education
. Imagine a researcher hired by the NCAA wants to know how athletes' academic performance is affected by the stage of their competitive season. She examines performance in the pre-season, throughout the active competitive season, and post-season, having 150 athletes, from across several different sports, assessed during each period. What statistical analysis would be appropriate for this research
Here, the research question meets the conditions required for a one-way within group ANOVA. One way within group anova allows for comparison between the mean of three or more groups or levels of one independent variable on a dependent variable. In the scenario above, the one independent variable is stage of the season with levels : (pre-season, throughout active season and post season) and the dependent variable being the athletes academic performance. It is a within group ANOVA as all subjects are used to test each level of the independent variable. Which is different from between groups where different subjects are assigned to different groups.
