Question 641:

Asked on March 2, 2009

Tags: Critical Value , test statistic

1

Answer:

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A critical value in hypothesis testing is the point at which you reject the null hypothesis given a test statistic that exceeds this amount. For example, a typical critical value for a 2-sided hypothesis test using the z-statistic is 1.96. If your test-statistic is say 2.01, which exceeds this amount, you reject the null-hypothesis. You can then see why it is also called a cut-off score for the test-statistic: a test statistic less than the critical value (the cut-off) you don't reject the null hypothesis and anything above this cut-off you DO reject the null hypothesis.