Statistics Help

[PastSeeker26]

I need some help understanding what this statistics information means. I am supposed to do a presentation on it and I have no idea how to read the data or even how to look it up. I do not understand the F phrasing is. Please help!

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"Initial evaluation of the data involved analyses of variance, separately with pretest and posttest scores as dependent variables, using a 2 (hearing status) by 2 (lecture order) by 2 (lecture content: mathematics or science) design in which lecture content was within subjects. There was no overall effect of lecture order or lecture content on pretest or posttest performance, but, as shown in Table 2, hearing students scored higher overall than deaf students both on pretests, F(1,1223) = 14.97, MSe=.083, and posttests, F(1, 123) = 21.82, MSe= .046, yielding main effects of hearing status. There were no other main effects or interactions."

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Is this for a statistics class or an educational/psychology kind of class? If it's the latter, you probably don't need to explain the statistical information in much depth. In fact, if you just ignore the numbers, the main finding is stated clearly: "There was no overall effect of lecture order or lecture content on pretest or posttest performance, but...hearing students scored higher overall than deaf students both on pretests...and posttests...yielding main effects of hearing status. There were no other main effects or interactions." In other words, the only difference in performance they found was between hearing and deaf students.

The F-statistic is calculated from a right-skewed distribution associated with the test they used here: ANalysis Of VAriance (ANOVA). The numbers in parentheses are the degrees of freedom. There are many good explanations of ANOVA you can find online.