SPSS Statistics For Dummies, 4th Edition

Chapter 19

Showing Relationships between Continuous Variables

IN THIS CHAPTER

Graphing relationships

Running correlations

Running simple linear regression

Making predictions

The two most commonly used statistical techniques to analyze relationships between continuous variables are the Pearson correlation and linear regression.

Many people use the term correlation to refer to the idea of a relationship between variables or a pattern. This view of the term correlation is correct, but correlation also refers to a specific statistical technique. Pearson correlations are used to study the relationship between two continuous variables. For example, you may want to look at the relationship between height and weight, and you may find that as height increases, so does weight. In other words, the variables are correlated with each other because changes in one variable affects the other.

Whereas correlation just tries to determine if two variables are related, linear regression takes this one step further and tries to predict the values of one variable based on another variable. (If you know ...