Bivariate Correlation

Overview
Correlation helps you determine the strength and direction of a linear
relationship between two variables. It is a measure of how well a straight
line running through the data points actually fits the distribution. The
relationship between the variables may be positive (direct) or negative
(indirect or inverse). The values of the correlation coefficient range from -1
(perfect negative relationship) to 1 (perfect positive relationship). The closer
the value is to 0, the weaker the relationship. A correlation coefficient value
of 0 means there is absolutely no relationship.

Hypotheses
H0: There is not a significant relationship between the variables.
H1: There is a significant relationship between the variables (alternately,
there is a positive or negative relationship between the variables).

Equation
It’s ugly. Here, look at the puppy instead
This is definitely something you will want to use
a statistical analysis software program to do.

Warning!
• There are several different kinds of correlation. This handout only
covers bivariate correlation.
• Correlation is most easily used with continuous variables.
• Correlation does not equal a causal relationship. All you know is that
the variables vary together, not that one actually causes the change in
the other.

SPSS
• Click on Analyze > Correlation > Bivariate. . .
• Select 2 or more variables. In this example, we are checking to see if
there is a relationship between the time spent searching for articles
and the grade received on a research assignment.
• Select the correlation coefficient (usually that will be Pearson).

UT Southwestern Medical Center Library—August 2007

This output is called a correlation matrix. It can look quite complicated when
you are running a lot of variables for correlation all at once, but it is really
simple to read once you get the hang of it. Each cell of the table tells us
about the relationship between its column and row variables. Timesear *
timesear and grade * grade are both actually comparing a variable with
itself. We see a perfect correlation because it’s the same variable. We don’t
care about these cells. We are interested in the cells that look at the
relationship between the grade and the time spent searching. We can see
that there is a statistically significant positive relationship between grade and
search time. As the time spent working on a search increases, the grade
received on the search assignment increases, r (28) = .630, p < .001.
Degrees of freedom are equal to N - 2.

SPSS Help
For additional examples of how to perform correlation analysis in SPSS,
please see the following sites.
• http://academic.uofs.edu/department/psych/methods/cannon99/level
2a.html : Dr. Cannon of the University of Scranton explains correlation
analysis with two or more continuous variables.
• http://faculty.winthrop.edu/sinnj/PYSC%20301/SPSS%20Guides/correl
ation%20and%20regression.pdf : An example of how to perform a
correlation analysis and interpret the output created by Jeff Sinn of
Winthrop University.
• http://www.indstate.edu/cirt/research/statsoftware/spss13_correlation
.pdf : An example with many screenshots of how to perform a
correlation analysis from Indiana State University

UT Southwestern Medical Center Library—August 2007