In statistics, a paired difference test is a type of location test that is used when comparing two sets of measurements to assess whether their population means differ. A paired difference test uses additional information about the sample that is not present in an ordinary unpaired testing situation, either to increase the statistical power, or to reduce the effects of confounders.
Specific methods for carrying out paired difference tests are, for normally distributed difference t-test (where the population standard deviation of difference is not known) and the paired Z-test (where the population standard deviation of the difference is known), and for differences that may not be normally distributed the Wilcoxon signed-rank test.[1]
The most familiar example of a paired difference test occurs when subjects are measured before and after a treatment. Such a "repeated measures" test compares these measurements within subjects, rather than across subjects, and will generally have greater power than an unpaired test. Another example comes from matching cases of a disease with comparable controls.
