Assessing transformation methods for group comparisons under violated assumptions: type I error rate and test power

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this study, some transformation methods that are applied when the assumptions of analysis of variance are not met are evaluated in terms of type I error rate and the test power, under circumstances with different distributions, number of groups, number of observations, variance ratios, and different standard deviation differences. The data set used in the study consisted of random numbers generated from N (0,1), and χ2(3) distributions using the random function of the Numpy library in the Python programming language. The logarithmic, square root and root transformations were evaluated on ANOVA based on simulation combinations. It was observed that the transformation techniques of taking the square root after adding 0.5 and 0.375 to the data were relatively more reliable compared to other transformations in terms of type I error rate. However, in every case, type I error rate determined at the beginning of the experiment increased both before and after the transformation was applied. In particular, interestingly, the third and fourth degree root transformations gave better results of test power in the right skewed distribution. In addition, we compared the transformation techniques in question to determine the normality of the data and the homogeneity of variances by a real data.

Keywords

• data transformation
• square root transformation
• logarithmic transformation
• analysis of variance
• type I error rate
• test power