What are the limitations of a one-way ANOVA?

One-way ANOVA (analysis of variance) has three recognized limitations. 

• It can only be used when testing a single factor and a single dependent variable. 
• The dependent variable must be normally distributed in each of the groups and the variability within groups must be similar across the groups. 
• The biggest limitation of one-way ANOVA is that it is an omnibus test statistic, which means it can indicate that at least two groups are different but it cannot indicate which specific groups are different from each other. After performing a one-way ANOVA, researchers have to use a post hoc test to determine which specific groups differed from each other.