Stats Assistance
Relationship between two variables

Correlation Calculator

Paste paired values for two variables and get Pearson's r or Spearman's rho with an exact p value, confidence interval, and APA 7 write-up. Values are matched by position.

APA 7 write-up
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Pearson or Spearman?

Pearson's r measures the strength of a linear relationship between two continuous variables and is the default when both variables are roughly normally distributed without extreme outliers.

Spearman's rho ranks the data first, so it measures monotonic association. Choose it for ordinal variables (like Likert items), skewed distributions, or data with outliers.

Reading the numbers

Correlations run from -1 to +1. By common benchmarks, |r| around .10 is small, .30 medium, and .50 large. The p value tests whether the correlation differs from zero; with large samples, even tiny correlations become significant, so always interpret the size of r, not just the p value. r² tells you the proportion of variance the two variables share.

The confidence interval uses the Fisher z transformation. For Spearman, the interval is approximate.

Correlation is not causation

A significant correlation says the variables move together. It cannot say which causes which, or whether a third variable drives both. Design, not statistics, answers causal questions.