Question

In diabetes management, an important treatment goal is to lower the hemoglobin A1c (glycosylated hemoglobin, approximates the percentage of red blood cells damaged by high blood sugar).

            Suppose we wanted to test the hypothesis that Drug A is more effective than Drug B in lowing the A1c level. Healthy people who do not have diabetes have an A1c between 4 and 5. The goal in diabetes management is often to bring a higher A1c (such as 9 or above) down to a level below 7.0.

Use the following information. Compute a t-statistic for independent groups:

A1c level after three months of treatment:

mean with Drug A = 7.7

mean with Drug B = 7.5

each group has n = 30

SD₁ = .3

SD₂ = .2

What are the degrees of freedom and the value of t ? Using α=0.05 for a two-tailed test, is this t statistic significant?

Answer 1