Pearson Correlations

When to Use

You can use the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (symbolized by the letter r) to assess the nature of the relationship between two variables when both are measured on either an interval- or ratio-level of measurement. It is further assumed that both variables should include a relatively large number of values. For example, you would not use this statistic if one of the variables could assume only three values.

It would be appropriate to compute a Pearson correlation coefficient to investigate the nature of the relationship between GRE verbal test scores and grade point average (GPA). GRE verbal is assessed on an interval-level of measurement, and can assume a wide variety of values (i.e., possible ...

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