How to Choose the Right Statistical Analysis for Your Research Aim or Hypothesis

Choosing the right statistical analysis for a research aim, question, or hypothesis is a difficult task. However, it doesn’t have to be! The key to selecting the right statistic is ‘structural awareness’, which requires looking beyond the topic of the research, and instead focusing on the structural characteristics of the research design (e.g., the independent and dependent variables). Decision trees and matrices can help you develop your structural awareness. In this guide, we provide some decision trees and matrices and demonstrate how to use them to select appropriate statistical analyses for a range of research scenarios. Throughout, we emphasize why each statistical analysis has been selected. We finish by providing the opportunity to independently practice your structural awareness and statistic selection skills with some multiple-choice questions.