Since the one-sample t-test determined statistical difference between citizens’ perceptions about the present state of democracy to differ from a value of 6, we can further compare and contrast perceptions between North Africa and Southern Africa. Using the 2015 Afrobaromater, we can use independent-samples t-test to associate means for two groups of subjects. In this case, we are to compare means perceptions between North Africa and Southern Africa. In SPSS, the way to compute independent samples t-test is by going to analyze, compare means and select Independent samples t-test. The option for test variable is the level of democracy today while grouping variable serves as country by region. Consequently, we will define our grouping variables as 3 for Southern African and 4 is North Africa. There are 15979 number of respondents in southern Africa. There is 5418 number of respondents in North Africa. The average mean for the southern Africa is 5.78 while the North Africa’s is 4.90. Therefore, the average mean different for calculating P-value is 0.870.

          My research question addressed the important of finding group difference or mean difference between southern Africa and North African in relation to their level of perceptions on democracy. This is important in statistical analysis for how we can find levene’s test for equality of variances, while making acute decision to either accept or reject the null hypothesis. In this case, either the use of equal or non-equal variance of assumption recognized any sign of statistical insignificance. In calculating statistical significance using conservative 0.050 threshold; from the chart, we can see that P>0.05, which leads us to reject null hypothesis. There statistical difference between citizen’s perceptions in South Africa and Northern Africa about the level of democracy today. This also leads us to a very significant supposition, i.e when we are looking at the differences between two groups of interest, we should to evaluate the difference between their mean relative to the variability of their outcome (or we call it, marks).

            The meaningfulness of a study relies heavily on how statistical the difference are in relation to the variable (s) being measured. Looking at the second table below, and using either the levene’s Test for equality of variances, we can conclude that P-value show statistical difference between the two groups. If I was to use a traditional level of p-value to be P<0.05, I would assume an equal variance of statistically significance perceptions between the two groups. Therefore, statistical significance occur and there is a meaningfulness in the conclusion.

Group Statistics
	Country by region	N	Mean	Std. Deviation	Std. Error Mean
Q46a. Level of democracy: today	Southern Africa	15979	5.78	2.795	.022
North Africa	5418	4.90	3.092	.042

Independent Samples Test
	Levene’s Test for Equality of Variances	t-test for Equality of Means
F	Sig.	t	df	Sig. (2-tailed)	Mean Difference	Std. Error Difference	95% Confidence Interval of the Difference
Lower	Upper
Q46a. Level of democracy: today	Equal variances assumed	130.649	.000	19.453	21395	.000	.879	.045	.790	.967
Equal variances not assumed			18.510	8610.815	.000	.879	.047	.786	.972

Reference

The Guardian. (n.d.). Negative perceptions slow Africa’s development. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2010/dec/10/africa-postcolonial-perceptions

Wagner, W. E. (2016). Using IBM® SPSS® statistics for research methods and social science statistics (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.