<P> In statistics, Levene's test is an inferential statistic used to assess the equality of variances for a variable calculated for two or more groups . Some common statistical procedures assume that variances of the populations from which different samples are drawn are equal . Levene's test assesses this assumption . It tests the null hypothesis that the population variances are equal (called homogeneity of variance or homoscedasticity). If the resulting p - value of Levene's test is less than some significance level (typically 0.05), the obtained differences in sample variances are unlikely to have occurred based on random sampling from a population with equal variances . Thus, the null hypothesis of equal variances is rejected and it is concluded that there is a difference between the variances in the population . </P> <P> Some of the procedures typically assuming homoscedasticity, for which one can use Levene's tests, include analysis of variance and t - tests . </P>

Interpreting the levene's test for equality of variances