2.4. Statistical Analysis

Statistical analysis was performed using STATISTICA 14.0 (TIBCO Software Inc., Palo Alto, CA, USA (2020) and the Data Science Workbench, version 14. http://tibco.com, accessed on 1 February 2023). The normality of the distributions of the study variables in the groups was tested using the Shapiro–Wilk test. Comparisons of the means were made using analysis of variance for the repeated measures. GROUP (Control, Intervention) and SEX (Men, Women) were used as fixed factors. The repeated measures factor TESTING SESSION took two values: Before and After. Due to the primary aim of the study, it was assumed that the different responses of the study groups would be described by the GROUP × TESTING SESSION interaction. Detailed comparisons were carried out using the Tukey post hoc test. In the case of variables not meeting the condition of normality of distributions, the Mann–Whitney U test was used for comparisons between groups. Changes in variables before and after the intervention were assessed using the Wilcoxon test. For these variables, the response to the intervention was assessed by comparing the increments of the study variables in the two groups (Intervention, Control) using the Mann–Whitney U test.

Effect sizes were assessed using partial eta square (ANOVA), Glass’s rank-biserial correlation coefficient (Mann–Whitney test) and equivalent correlation coefficient (Wilcoxon test). A significance level α = 0.05 was adopted.