Spearman Correlations
When to Use
Spearman’s rank-order correlation coefficient (symbolized as rs) can be appropriate in a variety of circumstances. First, you can use Spearman correlations when both variables are assessed at an ordinal level of measurement. It is also correct when one variable is an ordinal-level variable, and the other is an interval- or ratio-level variable.
However, it can also be appropriate to use the Spearman correlation when both variables are on an interval or ratio scale. This is because the Spearman coefficient is a distribution-free test. Among other things, a distribution-free test is one that makes no assumptions concerning the shape of the distribution from which sample data were drawn. For this reason, researchers ...
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