Is it bad to fail to reject ho in a chi square test?

Question

i have to do this experiment for my stats class, but I get fail to reject ho for my chi square test. i'm not sure if that's a good thing because i thought reject ho was suppose to happen. my sample size is 105. i tried with fewer people like 50 plus which got me a reject ho but the cell counts were less than 5, which is all wrong. can someone please help me?

-thanks

Answer 1

You cannot draw any conclusions about which parent makes more of an impact on the child than the other from these tests. The two tests are independent and you cannot compare p-values to tell you anything.

if you are looking for a way determine which parent, if either, has an impact on the child then I'd suggest using a general linear model and analysis of variance or analysis of covariance depending on the data you have available.

Answer 2

It happens...no it's not bad, just disappointing if you were doing research related to your career!   You do not always reject the null hypothesis!