Correlation

What is correlation? If the correlation between age and physical flexibility is -.68, what does this mean? How would this correlation look on a scatter diagram? What general shape would it have?

Our text defines correlation as the relationship between the scores of two variables (Aron, Aron, & Coups, 2009). Simply, it is a way to measure how associated two variables are. In correlational research, the correlational coefficient usually ranges from +1.0 to -1.0 (McGraw-Hill, 2011). A 0 would represent no correlation. In the example of age and physical flexibility, the correlation is -.68. This is a negative correlation. A negative correlation means that as one variable increases, the other variable decreases (McGraw-Hill, 2011). In this example, I am going to assume that as age (variable 1) increases, physical flexibility (variable 2) decreases. Hence, there is a negative association between the two. On a scatter diagram, data would slope downward from left to right. This is due to the physical flexibility number decreasing as the age number increases.

Aron, A., Aron, E. N., & Coups, E. J. (2009). Statistics for psychology (5th ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.

McGraw-Hill. (2011). Psychsmart. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

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