My samples are independent and consist of 8 observations. The values are discrete and measured on ordinal scale. I found the following example for an WMW test online but I do not know how to write a function to be supplied to the boot command: # Run Wilcoxon Exact Test # # Create X and Y variables x <- c(76.375, 75.125, 77, 77, 77, 76.375, 77, 76.375) y <- c(76.375, 75.75, 76.375, 76.375, 76.375, 75.75, 77, 76.375) print(nx <- length(x)) print(ny <- length(y)) data <- c(x, y) names(data) <- c(rep("x", nx), rep("y", ny)) data <- sort(data) r <- rank(data) # Printout data and ranks in X and Y rbind(data, r) # Wilcoxon W statistic print(w <- sum(r[names(data) == "y"])) # Umrechnen in Mann-Whitney U statistic print(u <- w - ny * (ny + 1) / 2) # Get probability from Wilcoxon distribution m=8, n=8 pwilcox(u, nx, ny) # Perform two-sided exact test wilcox.exact(y, x, alternative="two.sided") Thanks in advance Stefan --- Stefan Strecker Universitaet Karlsruhe (TH) Department of Economics and Business Engineering Chair for Information Management and Systems Englerstrasse 14 D-76131 Karlsruhe, Germany T: +49 721 608 8374 F: +49 721 608 8399 M: +49 179 69 29 746 http://www.iw.uni-karlsruhe.de DH PGP Key available upon request