A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine examined the prevalence of so-called “difficult” patients who ask for unneeded prescriptions, unnecessarily complain, or otherwise cause extraordinary frustrations for their medical provider. Researchers found the mean age of doctors having the greatest problems with difficult patients was 41, while the mean age of doctors having the least problems with difficult patients was 46. Assume that data file XR11012 contains the ages for doctors in each of these patient-difficulty samples. In a suitable one-tail test at the 0.01 level, was the mean age for doctors having the greatest problems with difficult patients significantly less than that for those having the least problems with difficult patients? Identify and interpret the p-value for the test.
A computer and statistical software.