MATLAB: Means instead of medians for non-parametric statistical tests

meanmediannonparametricstatisticswilcoxon

MATLAB's Wilcoxon signed-rank test and rank sum test both test for medians of data. However, I'm only interested in the mean values of my data and want to perform a non-parametric test for these means. Is there a way to work around this?
I know the good old t-test tests for means, but my data doesn't follow a normal distribution.

Best Answer

If your data do not follow a parametric distribution, or you don’t know the distribution, use a nonparametric test, and accept the test on the medians.
If you are using a paired design (for instance using the same population to observe the effect before and after a particular intervention), use the signed-rank test. If a non-paired design (intervention on one group of two), use the rank-sum test.
If your data do not meet the assumptions of a particular test, such as requiring in part that they be normally-distributed, you cannot use a t-test.