Statistics for People Who (Think They) Hate Statistics

by Neil J. Salkind

You already know that ANOVA comes in at least one flavor, the simple analysis of variance we discussed in Chapter 13. With simple analysis of variance, there is one factor or one treatment variable (such as group membership) being explored, and there are more than two groups or levels within this factor or treatment variable. Now, we bump up the entire technique a notch to so we can explore more than one factor simultaneously. This is called factorial analysis of variance. The term factorial analysis of variance is used to describe any analysis of variance where there is more than one independent variable, more than one way to group participants. Those independent variables are thought of as factors. You may have heard of a statistical procedure called factor analysis (which we discuss in Chapter 18). Factor analysis, a correlational procedure, is not the same thing as factorial analysis of variance.