Example of Friedman Test

A marketing analyst wants to compare the relative effectiveness of three types of advertising: direct mail, newspaper, and magazine. The analyst performs a randomized block experiment. For 12 clients, the marketing firm used all three types of advertising over a 1-year period and recorded the year's percentage response to each type of advertising.

To determine whether the median treatment effect differs for the type of advertising, the analyst uses the Friedman test.

  1. Open the sample data, AdvertisingEffectiveness.MTW.
  2. Choose Stat > Nonparametrics > Friedman.
  3. In Response, enter Response.
  4. In Treatment, enter Advtype.
  5. In Blocks, enter Company.
  6. Click OK.

Interpret the results

Because the p-value for the advertising data is less than the significance level of 0.05, the analyst rejects the null hypothesis and concludes that at least one of three types of advertising has a different effect. Also, the median responses for direct mail (6.100) and magazine (8.150) are close to the overall median (9.183), but the median response for newspaper advertising (13.300) is substantially higher. These results indicate that newspaper advertising might be more effective than the other types of advertising.

Method

Treatment = Advtype
Block = Company

Descriptive Statistics

AdvtypeNMedianSum of Ranks
direct-mail126.100016.0
magazine128.150024.0
newspaper1213.300032.0
Overall369.1833 

Test

Null hypothesisH₀: All treatment effects are zero
Alternative hypothesisH₁: Not all treatment effects are zero
DFChi-SquareP-Value
210.670.005