A nurse manager of a large step-down unit wants to decrease admissions to the ICU by improving nursing staff's ability to identify deteriorating patients. She asks the education department to provide training on identification of the deteriorating patient. The manager and education department are unsure how much training the nurses will need and decide to offer three courses of varying amounts of education: short (30 minutes) , moderate (120 minutes) , and long (240 minutes) Since the manager is unsure which course would be best for her staff, she decides to send 20 to the short class, 20 to the moderate class, and 20 to the long class. After the training is complete she tracks the number of ICU admissions over the next 9 months to compares the three groups to see if there are any differences in the average number of ICU admissions:

a. Correlation
b. Independent samples t-test
c. ANOVA
d. Chi-square