Kruskal-Wallis H Test using SPSS

Statistics
Introduction
The Kruskal-Wallis H test (sometimes also called the "one-way ANOVA on ranks") is
a rank-based nonparametric test that can be used to determine if there are statistically
significant differences between two or more groups of an independent variable on a
continuous or ordinal dependent variable. It is considered the nonparametric
alternative to the one-way ANOVA, and an extension of the Mann-Whitney U test to
allow the comparison of more than two independent groups.
For example, you could use a Kruskal-Wallis H test to understand whether exam
performance, measured on a continuous scale from 0-100, differed based on test
anxiety levels (i.e., your dependent variable would be "exam performance" and your
independent variable would be "test anxiety level", which has three independent
groups: students with "low", "medium" and "high" test anxiety levels). Alternately,
you could use the Kruskal-Wallis H test to understand whether attitudes towards pay
discrimination, where attitudes are measured on an ordinal scale, differed based on job
position (i.e., your dependent variable would be "attitudes towards pay
discrimination", measured on a 5-point scale from "strongly agree" to "strongly
disagree", and your independent variable would be "job description", which has three
independent groups: "shop floor", "middle management" and "boardroom").
It is important to realize that the Kruskal-Wallis H test is an omnibus test statistic and
cannot tell you which specific groups of your independent variable are statistically
significantly different from each other; it only tells you that at least two groups were
different. Since you may have three, four, five or more groups in your study design,
determining which of these groups differ from each other is important. You can do
this using a post hoc test (N.B., we discuss post hoc tests later in this guide).
This "quick start" guide shows you how to carry out a Kruskal-Wallis H test using
SPSS Statistics, as well as interpret and report the results from this test. However,

before we introduce you to this procedure, you need to understand the different
assumptions that your data must meet in order for a Kruskal-Wallis H test to give you
a valid result. We discuss these assumptions next.

SPSS Statistics

Assumptions
When you choose to analyse your data using a Kruskal-Wallis H test, part of the
process involves checking to make sure that the data you want to analyse can actually
be analysed using a Kruskal-Wallis H test. You need to do this because it is only
appropriate to use a Kruskal-Wallis H test if your data "passes" four assumptions that
are required for a Kruskal-Wallis H test to give you a valid result. In practice,
checking for these four assumptions just adds a little bit more time to your analysis,
requiring you to click a few more buttons in SPSS Statistics when performing your
analysis, as well as think a little bit more about your data, but it is not a difficult task.
Before we introduce you to these four assumptions, do not be surprised if, when
analysing your own data using SPSS Statistics, one or more of these assumptions is
violated (i.e., is not met). This is not uncommon when working with real-world data
rather than textbook examples, which often only show you how to carry out a
Kruskal-Wallis H test when everything goes well! However, dont worry. Even when
your data fails certain assumptions, there is often a solution to overcome this. First,
lets take a look at these four assumptions:
o

Assumption #1: Your dependent variable should be measured at

the ordinal or continuous level (i.e., interval or ratio). Examples ofordinal
variables include Likert scales (e.g., a 7-point scale from "strongly agree"
through to "strongly disagree"), amongst other ways of ranking categories (e.g.,
a 3-pont scale explaining how much a customer liked a product, ranging from
"Not very much", to "It is OK", to "Yes, a lot"). Examples of continuous
variables include revision time (measured in hours), intelligence (measured
using IQ score), exam performance (measured from 0 to 100), weight
(measured in kg), and so forth. You can learn more about ordinal and
continuous variables in our article: Types of Variable.

Assumption #2: Your independent variable should consist of two or more

categorical, independent groups. Typically, a Kruskal-Wallis H test is used
when you have three or more categorical, independent groups, but it can be
used for just two groups (i.e., aMann-Whitney U test is more commonly used
for two groups). Example independent variables that meet this criterion include
ethnicity (e.g., three groups: Caucasian, African American and Hispanic),
physical activity level (e.g., four groups: sedentary, low, moderate and high),
profession (e.g., five groups: surgeon, doctor, nurse, dentist, therapist), and so
forth.
Assumption #3: You should have independence of observations, which
means that there is no relationship between the observations in each group or
between the groups themselves. For example, there must be different
participants in each group with no participant being in more than one group.
This is more of a study design issue than something you can test for, but it is an
important assumption of the Kruskal-Wallis H test. If your study fails this
assumption, you will need to use another statistical test instead of the KruskalWallis H test (e.g., a Friedman test). If you are unsure whether your study
meets this assumption, you can use our Statistical Test Selector, which is part
of our enhanced content.

As the Kruskal-Wallis H test does not assume normality in the data and is much less
sensitive to outliers, it can be used when these assumptions have been violated and the
use of a one-way ANOVA is inappropriate. In addition, if your data is ordinal, a oneway ANOVA is inappropriate, but the Kruskal-Wallis H test is not. However, the
Kruskal-Wallis H test does come with an additional data consideration,Assumption
#4, which is discussed below:
o

Assumption #4: In order to know how to interpret the results from a KruskalWallis H test, you have to determine whether thedistributions in each group
(i.e., the distribution of scores for each group of the independent variable) have
the same shape (which also means the same variability). To understand what
this means, take a look at the diagram below:

Copyright 2014. Laerd Statistics

In the diagram on the left above, the distribution of scores for the "Caucasian",
"African American" and "Hispanic" groups have thesame shape. On the other
hand, in the diagram on the right above, the distribution of scores for each
group are not identical (i.e., they have different shapes and variabilities).
If your distributions have the same shape, you can use SPSS Statistics to carry
out a Kruskal-Wallis H test to compare the medians of your dependent variable
(e.g., "engagement score") for the different groups of the independent variable
you are interested in (e.g., the groups, Caucasian, African American and
Hispanic, for the independent variable, "ethnicity"). However, if your
distributions have adifferent shape, you can only use the Kruskal-Wallis H test
to compare mean ranks. Having similar distributions simply allows you to
use medians to represent a shift in location between the groups (as illustrated
in the diagram on the left above). As such, it is very important to check this
assumption or you can end up interpreting your results incorrectly.
You can check assumption #4 using SPSS Statistics. You should also check that your
data meets assumptions #1, #2 and #3, which you can do without using SPSS
Statistics. Just remember that if you do not check assumption #4, you will not know
whether you are able to compare medians or just mean ranks, meaning that you might

incorrectly interpret and report the result of the Kruskal-Wallis H test. This is why we
dedicate a number of sections of our enhanced Kruskal-Wallis H test guide to help
you get this right. You can learn more about assumption #4 and what you will need to
interpret in the Assumptions section of our enhanced Kruskal-Wallis H test guide,
which you can access by subscribing to the site here.
In the Test Procedure in SPSS Statistics section of this "quick start" guide, we
illustrate the SPSS Statistics procedure to perform a Kruskal-Wallis H test assuming
that your distributions are not the same shape and you have to interpret mean ranks
rather than medians. First, we set out the example we use to explain the KruskalWallis H test procedure in SPSS Statistics.

SPSS Statistics

Example
A medical researcher has heard anecdotal evidence that certain anti-depressive drugs
can have the positive side-effect of lowering neurological pain in those individuals
with chronic, neurological back pain, when administered in doses lower than those
prescribed for depression. The medical researcher would like to investigate this
anecdotal evidence with a study. The researcher identifies 3 well-known, antidepressive drugs which might have this positive side effect, and labels them Drug A,
Drug B and Drug C. The researcher then recruits a group of 60 individuals with a
similar level of back pain and randomly assigns them to one of three groups Drug A,
Drug B or Drug C treatment groups and prescribes the relevant drug for a 4 week
period. At the end of the 4 week period, the researcher asks the participants to rate
their back pain on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 indicating the greatest level of pain. The
researcher wants to compare the levels of pain experienced by the different groups at
the end of the drug treatment period. The researcher runs a Kruskal-Wallis H test to
compare this ordinal, dependent measure ( Pain_Score ) between the three drug
treatments (i.e., the independent variable, Drug_Treatment_Group , is the type of drug with
more than two groups).

Test Procedure in SPSS Statistics

The eight steps below show you how to analyse your data using the Kruskal-Wallis H
test in SPSS Statistics. At the end of these eight steps, we show you how to interpret
the results from your Kruskal-Wallis H test. If you want to find out where the
differences between your groups lie (i.e., the Kruskal-Wallis H test only tells you
whether there was a statistically significant difference between your groups), you will
need to follow up your Kruskal-Wallis H test with a post hoc test. We also show you
how to carry these out a post hoc test using SPSS Statistics in our enhanced KruskalWallis H test guide, which you can access by subscribing to the site here.
Note: SPSS Statistics has two different procedures that can be used to run a KruskalWallis H test: a legacy procedure and a 'new' procedure (N.B., we just call it 'new'
for ease). The procedure we set out below is SPSS Statistics' legacy procedure. We
show you the legacy procedure because it can be used for more recent and older
versions of SPSS Statistics. However, it has the disadvantage of not automatically
running post hoc tests. The new procedure can be used for SPSS Statistics versions
18 and above (i.e., up to the current version 22), but not for older versions (i.e.,
version 17 and older). However, we show you how to carry out the new procedure in
our enhanced Kruskal-Wallis H test guide because it has the benefit of automatically
running post hoc tests, making the analysis procedure much quicker and easier.

Click Analyze > Nonparametric Tests > Legacy Dialogs > K Independent Samples... on the
top menu as shown below:

Published with written permission from SPSS Statistics, IBM Corporation.

You will be presented with the "Tests for Several Independent Samples" dialogue box, as
shown below:

Published with written permission from SPSS Statistics, IBM Corporation.

Note: The Kruskal-Wallis H checkbox in the Test Type area should be selected by default, but if
it is not, make sure to check this option. This option instructs SPSS Statistics to run a KruskalWallis H test on the variables you are going to transfer in the next step of this procedure.

Transfer the dependent variable, Pain_Score , into the Test Variable List: box and the independent
variable, Drug_Treatment_Group , into the Grouping Variable: box. You can transfer these variables
by either drag-and-dropping each variable into the appropriate boxes or by highlighting (i.e.,
clicking on) each variable and using the appropriate
similar to the one below:

button. You will end up with a screen

Published with written permission from SPSS Statistics, IBM Corporation.

Click the
button. You will be presented with the "Several Independent
Samples: Define Range" dialogue box, as shown below:

Note: If the
button is not active (i.e., it looks faded like this,
),
make sure that the Drug_Treatment_Group variable is highlighted in yellow (as shown above in
step 2) by clicking on it. This will activate the

Published with written permission from SPSS Statistics, IBM Corporation.

button.

Enter "1" into the Minimum: box and "3" into the Maximum box. These values represent the range
of codes you gave the groups of the independent variable, Drug_Treatment_Group (i.e., Drug A
was coded "1" through to Drug C which was coded "3"). You will end up with a screen similar to
below:

Published with written permission from SPSS Statistics, IBM Corporation.

Note: If you had four groups (e.g., Drug A through Drug D) and only wanted to analyse Drug B
through Drug D, you could enter "2" and "4" into the Minimum: and Maximum boxes, respectively
(assuming you ordered the groups numerically).

Click the
button and you will be returned to the "Tests for Several Independent
Samples" dialogue box, but now with a completed Grouping Variable: box, as highlighted below:

Published with written permission from SPSS Statistics, IBM Corporation.

Click the
button. You will be presented with the "Several Independent Samples:
Options" dialogue box, as shown below:

Published with written permission from SPSS Statistics, IBM Corporation.

Select the Descriptive checkbox if you want descriptives and/or the Quartiles checkbox if you want
medians and quartiles. If you selected the Descriptives option, you will be presented with the
following screen:

Published with written permission from SPSS Statistics, IBM Corporation.

Click the
button. You will be returned to the "Tests for Several Independent
Samples" dialogue box.

Click the

button. This will generate the results.