Spearman's rho - overview

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Spearman's rho
One way MANOVA
Variable 1Independent/grouping variable
One of ordinal levelOne categorical with $I$ independent groups ($I \geqslant 2$)
Variable 2Dependent variables
One of ordinal levelTwo or more quantitative of interval or ratio level
Null hypothesisTHIS TABLE IS YET TO BE COMPLETED
H0: $\rho_s = 0$

Here $\rho_s$ is the Spearman correlation in the population. The Spearman correlation is a measure for the strength and direction of the monotonic relationship between two variables of at least ordinal measurement level.

In words, the null hypothesis would be:

H0: there is no monotonic relationship between the two variables in the population.
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Alternative hypothesisn.a.
H1 two sided: $\rho_s \neq 0$
H1 right sided: $\rho_s > 0$
H1 left sided: $\rho_s < 0$
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Assumptionsn.a.
  • Sample of pairs is a simple random sample from the population of pairs. That is, pairs are independent of one another
Note: this assumption is only important for the significance test, not for the correlation coefficient itself. The correlation coefficient itself just measures the strength of the monotonic relationship between two variables.
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Test statisticn.a.
$t = \dfrac{r_s \times \sqrt{N - 2}}{\sqrt{1 - r_s^2}} $
Here $r_s$ is the sample Spearman correlation and $N$ is the sample size. The sample Spearman correlation $r_s$ is equal to the Pearson correlation applied to the rank scores.
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Sampling distribution of $t$ if H0 were truen.a.
Approximately the $t$ distribution with $N - 2$ degrees of freedom-
Significant?n.a.
Two sided: Right sided: Left sided: -
Example contextn.a.
Is there a monotonic relationship between physical health and mental health?-
SPSSn.a.
Analyze > Correlate > Bivariate...
  • Put your two variables in the box below Variables
  • Under Correlation Coefficients, select Spearman
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Jamovin.a.
Regression > Correlation Matrix
  • Put your two variables in the white box at the right
  • Under Correlation Coefficients, select Spearman
  • Under Hypothesis, select your alternative hypothesis
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Practice questionsPractice questions