The Study

Forty-three people were polled from random message boards on the internet. 9 different message boards were used, and each member was selected at random. Each person received a private message either via the message board's own mail system or their listed AOL Instant Messenger screen-name. They were asked two questions: whether or not they favored legalizing marijuana and whether or not they favored legalizing prostitution.

1. Let N₁ represent the proportion of people who favor legalization of marijuana, and N₂ represent the proportion of people who favor legalization of prostitution.

2. H_o = N₁ is equal to N₂

3. H_a = The proportions are different

4. Significance level a=.05

5. Minitab output for two-prop t-test:

Estimate for p(Prostitution) - p(Marijuana): -0.193548

95% CI for p(Prostitution) - p(Marijuana): (-0.434435, 0.0473377)

Test for p(Prostitution) - p(Marijuana) = 0 (vs not = 0):

Z = -1.57 P-Value = 0.115

6. Since the P-value is so high, we cannot reject the null hypothesis at any reasonable level of significance.

7. There is insufficient evidence to make a claim that either proportion is greater than the other.

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