
Chapter 14
PB
Simple Linear Regression Analysis
533
Any negative or positive value of the slope will lead to the rejection of the null hypothesis and
acceptance of the alternative hypothesis (as the above hypothesis test is two-tailed). A negative
value of the slope indicates the inverse relationship between the independent variable x and the
dependent variable y. This means that larger values of the independent variable x are related to
smaller values of the dependent variable y and vice versa. In order to test the signi cant posi-
tive relationship between the two variables, the null and alternative hypotheses can be stated as
below:
H
0
: b
1
=