An elementary education researcher was interested in seeing how the color used to make corrections on students’ papers affected their self-esteem. He assembled first graders and asked them to take a...

An elementary education researcher was interested in seeing how the color used to make corrections on students’ papers affected their self-esteem. He assembled first graders and asked them to take a third-grade math test. He told the first graders that the test would be very difficult for them and they might not get very many answers right, but he needed their help. After the students were each called into a room to take the test alone, he pretended to grade it. Everyone had 25% of their answers marked wrong. For half the kids, these answers were marked with red ink and for the other half, the “incorrect” answers were marked with pencil. Each child then took a self-esteem inventory on which higher scores indicate more self-esteem.

The 17 red ink kids had a mean of 23.00 (s = 5.00); the 10 pencil kids had a mean score of 29.00 (s = 5.00). Using s2pooled =25.0, sM1−M2 =1.99, and alpha of .05 and a two tailed test, determine if there is a difference in self-esteem.