Table 2.

Choosing Simple Statistical Tests Based on the Type of Variable (Assuming Normal Distribution for Continuous Variables)

Independent Variable	Dependent Variable
	Dichotomous	Continuous (normal distribution)	Continuous (distribution is not normal)
Dichotomous	χ2 (large numbers) or Fisher’s exact test (small numbers)	t test (2 groups) or ANOVA (for more than 2 groups)	Nonparametric tests Wilcoxon rank sum test Kruskal-Wallis test
Continuous	t test or ANOVA	Pearson’s correlation coefficient	Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient

ANOVA=analysis of variance.