Multiple comparisons: It is not good practice to test for significant differences among pairs of group means unless the ANOVA suggests some such differences exist. Nevertheless, I admit it is tempting to take another look at the comparison of G1 with G3 (ignoring the existence of G2 and perhaps assuming normality), but then you should use a Welch t test to account for the differences in sample variances, and you should not make claims about the result unless the P-value is as low as .01 or .02. Looking at that difference more carefully might prompt a subsequent experiment.

ANOVA Table

There are two tests that you can run that are applicable when the assumption of homogeneity of variances has been violated: (1) Welch or (2) Brown and Forsythe test. Alternatively, you could run a Kruskal-Wallis H Test. For most situations it has been shown that the Welch test is best. Both the Welch and Brown and Forsythe tests are available in SPSS Statistics (see our One-way ANOVA using SPSS Statistics guide).

However, platykurtosis can have a profound effect when your group sizes are small. This leaves you with two options: (1) transform your data using various algorithms so that the shape of your distributions become normally distributed or (2) choose the nonparametric Kruskal-Wallis H Test which does not require the assumption of normality.

Testing for Normality using SPSS Statistics

We performed some manipulation checks to examine the internal validity of the perceptual-cognitive skill tests and any learning effects as a result of watching the same video clips multiple times

Due to our emotional distress measure having little prior validation, and our physical distress measure being entirely new, we first provide data to support the appropriateness of the two measures.