Spearman Correlation in SPSS
Suppose we want to answer the research question, “Are letter grades in reading and writing correlated?” We assume that all we have to test this hypothesis are the letter grades (A-F) achieved in reading and writing. Our reading and writing grades (Grade2 and Grade3) are ranked data and measured on an ordinal scale.
The Spearman correlation can be found in SPSS under Analyze > Correlate > Bivariate…
This opens the dialog for all bivariate correlations, which includes Pearson, Kendall’s Tau-b, and Spearman. Using the arrow, we add Grade2 and Grade3 to the list of variables for analysis. Then we need to tick the correlation coefficients we want to calculate. In this case, we want to select Spearman.
