Duffy's research addresses the relationships among amount of practice time, race times, and motivation for running in high school athletes. He measures motivation for running by a Likert scale. Given Duffy's research, which one of the following correlation coefficients should he use to analyze his data?
A) Kendall's tau
B) Spearman's rho
C) Pearson r
D) Phi coefficient

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Pearson correlation coefficient is the appropriate choice, as it is used for analyzing the linear relationship between two continuous variables, and in this case, Duffy is measuring the relationship between the amount of practice time, race times, and motivation for running, which are all continuous variables. Kendall's tau and Spearman's rho are both used when the relationship between variables is monotonic, while the Phi coefficient is used for analyzing the association between two categorical variables.

Duffy's Research Addresses the Relationships Among Amount of Practice Time