Correlation

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 1. A causal, complementary, parallel, or reciprocal relationship, especially a structural, functional, or qualitative correspondence between two comparable entities: a correlation between drug abuse and crime.Theren are many other examples

Definition
2. Statistics The simultaneous change in value of two numerically valued random variables: the positive correlation between cigarette smoking and the incidence of lung cancer; the negative correlation between age and normal vision.

What is correlation
The correlation is a way to measure how associated or related two variables are. The researcher looks at things that already exist and determines if and in what way those things are related to each other . The purpose of doing correlations is to allow us to make a prediction about one variable based on what we know about another variable.

Formula Product Moment

Example
For example, there is a correlation between income and education. We find that people with higher income have more years of education. You can also phrase it that people with more years of education have higher income. When we know there is a correlation between two variables, we can make a prediction. If we know a groups income, we can predict their years of education.

Direction
There are two types or directions of correlation. In other words, there are two patterns that correlations can follow. These are called positive correlation and negative correlation. Remember that in a correlational study, the researcher is measuring conditions that already exist. She or he is asking questions of a sample of participants, and finding out in what way pairs of variables are related. For example, a researcher could ask about the participants yearly income and years of education, to see if those two attributes are correlated.

Positive correlation
In a positive correlation, as the values of one of the variables increase, the values of the second variable also increase. Likewise, as the value of one of the variables decreases, the value of the other variable also decreases. The example above of income and education is a positive correlation. People with higher incomes also tend to have more years of education. People with fewer years of education tend to have lower income.

Examples of positive correlation

Here are some examples of positive correlations: 1.School Exam scores and college achievement among college students, those with higher school exam scores also have higher grades 2. Happiness and helpfulnessas peoples happiness level increases, so does their helpfulness (conversely, as peoples happiness level decreases, so does their helpfulness)

Example
Participant #1 #2 Income 125,000 100,000 Years of Education 19 20

#3
#4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10

40,000
35,000 41,000 29,000 35,000 24,000 50,000 60,000

16
16 18 12 14 12 16 17

Guess ?
I hope you have correctly calculated correlation . The answer is o.79 It is self checking exercise. Go to home and recheck it with Excel SPSS/ Gretl Or any other software.

Graph
We can make a graph, which is called a scatter plot. On the scatter plot below, each point represents one persons answers to questions about income and education . The line is the best fit to those points. All positive correlations have a scatter plot that looks like this . The line will always go in that direction if the correlation is positive.

Graph of income and years of participation in Education

Negative correlation
In a negative correlation, as the values of one of the variables increase, the values of the second variable decrease. Likewise, as the value of one of the variables decreases, the value of the other variable increases. This is still a correlation. It is like an inverse correlation. The word negative is a label that shows the direction of the correlation.

Other example of negative correlation

Here are some other examples of negative correlations: 1. Education and years in jailpeople who have more years of education tend to have fewer years in jail (or phrased as people with more years in jail tend to have fewer years of education).

 2. Crying and being heldamong babies, those who are held more tend to cry less (or phrased as babies who are held less tend to cry more) We can also plot the grades and TV viewing data, shown in the table below. The scatter plot below shows the sample data from the table.

T.V Watching and Grade Points

Participant #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 GPA 3.1 2.4 2.0 3.8 2.2 3.4 2.9 3.2 3.7 TV in hours per week 14 10 20 7 25 9 15 13 4

Guess ?
I hope you have correctly calculated correlation In this sample, the correlation is -.63. It is self checking exercise. Go to home and recheck it with any other software.

Graph of GPA and TV Watching

Strength
Correlations, whether positive or negative, range in their strength from weak to strong. Positive correlations will be reported as a number between 0 and 1. A score of 0 means that there is no correlation (the weakest measure). A score of 1 is a perfect positive correlation, which does not really happen in the real world. As the correlation score gets closer to 1, it is getting stronger. So, a correlation of .8 is stronger than .6; but .6 is stronger than .3. The correlation of the sample data above (income and years of education) is .79.

Types of correlation

Strength classification
As a rule of thumb, the following guidelines on strength of relationship are often useful (though many experts would somewhat disagree on the choice of boundaries).

Value of r Strength of relationship -1.0 to 0.5 or 1.0 to 0.5 Strong -0.5 to 0.3 or 0.3 to 0.5 Moderate -0.3 to 0.1 or 0.1 to 0.3 Weak 0.1 to 0.1 or less, None or very weak

 Negative correlations will be reported as a number between 0 and -1. Again, a 0 means no correlation at all. A score of 1 is a perfect negative correlation, which does not really happen. As the correlation score gets close to -1, it is getting stronger. So, a correlation of -.7 is stronger than -.5; but -.5 is stronger than .2.

 Remember that the negative sign does not indicate anything about strength. It is a symbol to tell you that the correlation is negative in direction. When judging the strength of a correlation, just look at the number and ignore the sign.

 Imagine reading four co relational studies with the following scores. You want to decide which study had the strongest results: -.3 -.8 .4 .7 In this example, -.8 is the strongest correlation. The negative sign means that its direction is negative. Use absolute value rather than sign to evaluate strength.

Advantage
1. An advantage of the correlation method is that we can make predictions about things when we know about correlations. If two variables are correlated, we can predict one based on the other. For example, we know that School scores and college achievement are positively correlated. So when college admission officials want to predict who is likely to succeed at their schools, they will choose students with high scores.

Disadvantage
1. The problem that most students have with the correlation method is remembering that correlation does not measure cause. Take a minute and chant to yourself: Correlation is not Causation! Correlation is not Causation! I always have my in-class students chant this, yet some still forget this very crucial principle.

Interpretation
We know that education and income are positively correlated. We do not know if one caused the other. It might be that having more education causes a person to earn a higher income. It might be that having a higher income allows a person to go to school more. It might also be some third variable.