The effect on type I error and power of various methods of resolving ties for six distribution-free tests of location

Abstract

The impact on Type I error robustness and power for nine different methods of resolving ties was assessed for six distribution-free statistics with four empirical data sets using Monte Carlo techniques. These statistics share an underlying assumption of population continuity such that samples are assumed to have no equal data values (no zero difference-scores, no tied ranks). The best results across all tests and combinations of simulation parameters were obtained by randomly resolving ties, although there were exceptions. The method of dropping ties and reducing the sample size performed poorly. Copyright © 2006 JMASM, Inc.