PCBA116 MODULE NO.

11
Spearman Rank Order
Correlation Coefficient
HOW DID IT START AND WHO
DEVELOPED IT?

Charles E. Spearman in 1863

Spearman Rank Order Correlation Coefficient

• It is a statistical measure of the strength and

direction between two ranked variables

• Determines the degree to which a relationship is

monotonic

• Represented by ρ or by rs
 Spearman Rank Order Correlation Coefficient

 Monotonically increasing or positive - as the x variable increases the

y variable also increase
 Monotonically decreasing or negative - as the x variable increases
the y variable decrease
 Not monotonic - as the x variable increases the y variable sometimes
decreases and sometimes increases.
Formula

Where:
rs= sample rank correlation coefficient
di= difference in ranks
n= sample size
Interpretation
The strength of a correlation

Value of coefficient Rs 
Meaning
(positive or negative)
A very weak
0.00 to 0.19
correlation
0.20 to 0.39 A weak correlation
A moderate
0.40 to 0.69
correlation
0.70 to 0.89 A strong correlation
A very strong
0.90 to 1.00
correlation
 Is The Spearman's Rank Value
Significant?
• If rs is equal to or above the critical value
(p=0.05) the REJECT the null hypothesis.
There is a SIGNIFICANT relationship between
the 2 variables.

• If rs (ignoring any sign) is less than the critical

value, ACCEPT the null hypothesis. There is
NO SIGNIFICANT relationship between the 2
variables.
 Example of Research that used
Spearman Rank Order Correlation
Coefficient
Spearman’s Rank Correlation
Analysis on Public Perception toward
Health Partnership Projects between
Indonesia and Australia in East Nusa
Tenggara Province
• Spearman’s correlation analysis can be
employed to test the strength of perceptions
data which is in ordinal form.
• The scale ranges from 1 to 5 with the
category starts from strongly disagree,
partly disagree, neutral, agree and strongly
agree consecutively.
• The result shows that most people in the
area perceived positively on the projects
implementation and impacts on the
community.
Illustrative Problem
Calories come from fat, also from
carbohydrates. How closely related are fat
calories and total calories? As an experiment, a
student team examined a sample of 20 brands
of pasta sauce. The serving sizes varied, so they
divided each product’s total calories and fat
calories by serving size to obtain a per gram
measurement. Rank were then calculated for
each measure of calories.