Spearman's Rank-Order Correlation using SPSS Statistics

Introduction
The Spearman rank-order correlation coefficient (Spearman’s correlation, for short) is a
nonparametric measure of the strength and direction of association that exists between two
variables measured on at least an ordinal scale. It is denoted by the symbol rs (or the Greek
letter ρ, pronounced rho). The test is used for either ordinal variables or for continuous data
that has failed the assumptions necessary for conducting the Pearson's product-moment
correlation. For example, you could use a Spearman’s correlation to understand whether there
is an association between exam performance and time spent revising; whether there is an
association between depression and length of unemployment; and so forth. If you would like
some more background information about this test, which does not include instructions for
SPSS Statistics, see our more general statistical guide: Spearman's rank-order correlation.
Possible alternative tests to Spearman's correlation are Kendall's tau-b or Goodman and
Kruskal's gamma.

This "quick start" guide shows you how to carry out a Spearman’s correlation using SPSS
Statistics. We show you the main procedure to carry out a Spearman’s correlation in the
Procedure section. First, we introduce you to the assumptions that you must consider when
carrying out a Spearman’s correlation.

SPSS Statistics
Assumptions
When you choose to analyse your data using Spearman’s correlation, part of the process
involves checking to make sure that the data you want to analyse can actually be analysed
using a Spearman’s correlation. You need to do this because it is only appropriate to use a
Spearman’s correlation if your data "passes" three assumptions that are required for
Spearman’s correlation to give you a valid result. In practice, checking for these three
assumptions just adds a little bit more time to your analysis, requiring you to click of few
more buttons in SPSS Statistics when performing your analysis, as well as think a little bit
more about your data, but it is not a difficult task. These three assumptions are:

Assumption #1: Your two variables should be measured on an ordinal, interval or ratio scale.
Examples of ordinal variables include Likert scales (e.g., a 7-point scale from "strongly
agree" through to "strongly disagree"), amongst other ways of ranking categories (e.g., a 3-
pont scale explaining how much a customer liked a product, ranging from "Not very much",
to "It is OK", to "Yes, a lot"). Examples of interval/ratio variables include revision time
(measured in hours), intelligence (measured using IQ score), exam performance (measured
from 0 to 100), weight (measured in kg), and so forth. You can learn more about ordinal,
interval and ratio variables in our article: Types of Variable.
Assumption #2: Your two variables represent paired observations. For example, imagine that
you were interested in the relationship between daily cigarette consumption and amount of
exercise performed each week. A single paired observation reflects the score on each variable
for a single participant (e.g., the daily cigarette consumption of "Participant 1" and the
amount of exercise performed each week by "Participant 1"). With 30 participants in the
study, this means that there would be 30 paired observations.
Assumption #3: There is a monotonic relationship between the two variables. A monotonic
relationship exists when either the variables increase in value together, or as one variable
value increases, the other variable value decreases. Whilst there are a number of ways to
check whether a monotonic relationship exists between your two variables, we suggest
creating a scatterplot using SPSS Statistics, where you can plot one variable against the other,
and then visually inspect the scatterplot to check for monotonicity.

Spearman's Rank-Order Correlation

The Spearman rank-order correlation coefficient (Spearman’s correlation, for short) is a

nonparametric measure of the strength and direction of association that exists between two
variables measured on at least an ordinal scale. It is denoted by the symbol rs (or the Greek
letter ρ, pronounced rho). The test is used for either ordinal variables or for continuous data
that has failed the assumptions necessary for conducting the Pearson's product-moment
correlation.

Example:

A teacher is interested in whether those who do better at English also do better in maths. To
test whether this is the case, the teacher records the scores of her 10 students in their end-
of-year examinations for both English and Math. Therefore, one variable records the English
scores and the second variable records the Math scores for the 10 pupils.

  Marks
English 56 75 45 71 62 64 58 80 76 61
Math 66 70 40 60 65 56 59 77 67 63

1. State the hypotheses. The first step is to state the null hypothesis and an alternative
hypothesis
H0: There is no statistically significant relationship between Mathematics and English
marks.

2. Ha: There is a statistically significant relationship between Mathematics and English

marks.
3. Level of significance α = .05
4. Open SPSS and enter the data in the data editor

5. Click Analyze > Correlate > Bivariate... on the main menu as shown below:

6. Move English_Marks and Math_ Marks on Variables , Select Spearman, Two-
tailed, flag significant correlations and click OK

7. Results
 8. Decision and Conclusion. 

A Spearman's rank-order correlation was run to determine the relationship between 10

students' English and Math exam marks. There was a strong, positive correlation between
English exam marks and Math exam marks, which was statistically significant (rs(8)
= .673, p = .033).