Once you know the number and type of DVs and IVs, you can make some decisions about your tests to conduct. There is also a good table in Chapter 12 of Don Stacks and Don Hocking's Essentials of Communication Research , which describes different types of statistics and their various applications in research. There is also software available today which will do the same thing. By the time you answer the questions, the software will tell you what you need to do. The t-test allows you to compare two means to determine the probability that the difference between the means is a real difference and not chance.
Data are usually in interval or ordinal form.
This is the most basic parametric test. As noted before, this test assumes normal population and homogeneity. After computing the t-value, is chance of occurring must be determined using a probability table. The relationship between these two variables can be determined by plotting the paired measurements on a graph called a scattergram. A correlation value near zero indicates no association.