A Cholesterol Test Was Given to 10 Heart Patients with High

Multiple Choice

A cholesterol test was given to 10 heart patients with high cholesterol levels. The same 10 heart patients are then given a new cholesterol-reducing drug for six months. Before the patients begin taking the drug, they are told to maintain their current diets and eating habits so that the effect of the drug can be more effectively determined. After taking the drug for six months, the same patients are given a cholesterol test again. The pharmaceutical company manufacturing the medicine wants to know if the drug is effective in reducing the cholesterol levels of the patients. The cholesterol levels before and after taking the drug are recorded for each patient. The population of cholesterol levels is not normally distributed. Which one of the following nonparametric tests is appropriate for this problem?

A) Wilcoxon signed ranks test
B) Wilcoxon rank sum test
C) sign test
D) Kruskal-Wallis test
E) Spearman's rank correlation test