1 A researcher wants to test the hypothesis that there is no difference in the importance attached to shopping by consumers living in Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands. A study is conducted and analysis of variance is used to analyse the data. The results obtained are presented in the following table:

Source df Sum of squares Mean squares F ratio F probability Between groups 3 70.212 23.404 1.12 0.3 Within groups 996 20,812.416 20.896 a Is there sufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis?

b What conclusion can be drawn from the table?

c If the average importance was computed for each group, would you expect the sample means to be similar or different?

d What was the total sample size in this study?