JMASM20: Exact permutation critical values for the kruskal-wallis one-way ANOVA

Abstract

The exhaustive enumeration of all the permutations of the observations in an experiment is the only possible way of truly constructing exact tests of significance. The permutation paradigm requires no distributional assumptions and works well with values that are normal, almost normal and non-normally distributed. The Kruskal-Wallis test does not require the assumptions that the samples are from normal populations and that the samples have the same standard deviation. In this article, the exact permutation distribution of the Kruskal-Wallis test statistic is generated empirically by actually obtaining all the distinct permutations of an experiment. The tables of exact critical values for the Kruskal-Wallis one-way ANOVA are produced. Copyright © 2005 JMASM, Inc.