Date:         Mon, 29 Nov 1999 18:50:00 +0100
Reply-To:     "Christian F.G. Schendera" <cschende@IX.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         "Christian F.G. Schendera" <cschende@IX.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
Subject:      Q: CORR Spearman
Comments: To: SASL <SAS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

This may be an easy one:
SAS online help says that "In addition to Pearson correlations, several
other statistics have  been proposed to measure association between two
continuous  variables: (...For example,.....) Spearman's rank-order
correlation coefficient is a nonparametric  measure that is calculated as
the correlation of the ranks of the  data." That's fine. Now the hook: My
statistics book tells me that Spearman could be used to measure the
association of two ordinal vars, too. Now I am a little confused: Is
Spearman for ordinal vars too, or ONLY for cont. vars because of SAS
specific Spearman algorithm or the like?
Best & Thanks in advance,
Chris