6/17/2021 Bartlett's Test: Definition and Examples - Statistics How To

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Bartlett’s Test: Definition and Examples

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What is Bartlett’s Test?
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There are actually two tests called Bartlett’s. The first part of this article is for Bartlett’s test for
homogeneity of variances. If you’re looking for Bartlett’s test for sphericity (testing that the correlation
matrix has an identity matrix), skip to the bottom section. 

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6/17/2021 Bartlett's Test: Definition and Examples - Statistics How To
Bartlett’s test for homogeneity of variances is used to test that variances are equal for all samples. It checks that
the assumption of equal variances is true before running certain statistical tests like the One-Way ANOVA. It’s used
when you’re fairly certain your data comes from a normal distribution. A similar test, called Levene’s test, is a better
choice for non normal distributions.

The null hypothesis for the test is that the variances are equal for all samples. In statistics terms, that’s:

H0: σ12 = σ22 = … = σk2.

The alternate hypothesis (the one you’re testing), is that the variances are not equal for one pair or more:

H0: σ12 ≠ σ22 ≠… ≠ σk2.

The test statistic is rather ugly:

That’s why you’ll most likely want to use software for the test.

Instructions for R.
Excel doesn’t have a built in function, but you can download this Bartlett’s test worksheet and fill in the
blanks (Worksheet downloaded from John McDonald at The University of Delaware).
In STATA, Bartlett’s is added onto ANOVA. The basic syntax of the command is oneway dv iv where iv is a
categorical variable. For more on running the test in STATA, see this Notre Dame article.

If you really want to run Bartlett’s test by hand, check out this article, which explains how to do it in great detail.

Bartlett’s Test for Sphericity

Bartlett’s test for Sphericity compares your correlation matrix (a matrix of Pearson correlations) to the identity
matrix. In other words, it checks if there is a redundancy between variables that can be summarized with some
factors.

In IBM SPSS 22, you can find the test in the Descriptives menu: Analyse-> Dimension reduction-> Factor->
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Descriptives-> KMO and Bartlett’s test of sphericity.
Instructions in R.

Reference:
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Snedecor, George W. and Cochran, William G. (1989), Statistical Methods, Eighth Edition, Iowa State University
Press.

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By Stephanie |
March 4, 2014 |
Statistics How To |

← Levene Test for Equality of Variances Logistic Regression (Logit Model): a Brief Overview →

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6/17/2021 Bartlett's Test: Definition and Examples - Statistics How To

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Basic Statistics.
Bayesian Statistics and Probability
Descriptive Statistics: Charts, Graphs and Plots.
Probability.
Binomial Theorem.
Definitions for Common Statistics Terms.
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Normal Distributions.
T-Distributions.
Central Limit Theorem.
Confidence Intervals.
Chebyshev's Theorem.
Sampling and Finding Sample Sizes.
Chi Square.
Online Tables (z-table, chi-square, t-dist etc.).
Regression Analysis / Linear Regression.
Non Normal Distributions.

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