Comparing the significance of descriptive statistics across groups.*

[nazlikaramollaoglu]

Dear Stata Forum users,

How can I calculate the significance of descriptive statistics across groups. ?

I am trying to form create a table in the following format:

Group 1 Group 2 Significant at 5% Level
Mean Producticity 777 771 Yes or No

[Carlo Lazzaro]

Nazli:
if the raw data of the continuous variables are available, you can go:

. use "http://www.stata-press.com/data/r15/auto.dta"
(1978 Automobile Data)

. ttest price, by(foreign)

Two-sample t test with equal variances
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Group |     Obs        Mean    Std. Err.   Std. Dev.   [95% Conf. Interval]
---------+--------------------------------------------------------------------
Domestic |      52    6072.423    429.4911    3097.104    5210.184    6934.662
 Foreign |      22    6384.682    558.9942    2621.915     5222.19    7547.174
---------+--------------------------------------------------------------------
combined |      74    6165.257    342.8719    2949.496    5481.914      6848.6
---------+--------------------------------------------------------------------
    diff |           -312.2587    754.4488               -1816.225    1191.708
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    diff = mean(Domestic) - mean(Foreign)                         t =  -0.4139
Ho: diff = 0                                     degrees of freedom =       72

    Ha: diff < 0                 Ha: diff != 0                 Ha: diff > 0
 Pr(T < t) = 0.3401         Pr(|T| > |t|) = 0.6802          Pr(T > t) = 0.6599

[Clyde Schechter]

I'm in an especially pedantic mood today, so I will just point out the abuse of language inherent in this thread.

If you are calculating statistical significance of differences between groups, your statistics are, by definition, inferential, not descriptive.