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> I have a categorical variable that I wish to correlate with a number of
> continuous variables.  The categorical variable has four categories (i.e. a
> firm can be either in category A or B or C or D).  I have been looking
> up my statistics reference books, but cannot get a clear answer.
>
> Which type of correlation is appropriate for this situation? Would
> Kendall's tau or Spearman's coefficient be more appropriate than
> Pearson's coefficient?
>
What is the question here?  Do you want to ask if there is an association
between the category and the continuous variables?  Do you want a statistic to
measure the degree of association?

What assumptions about the variables are you willing to make?  Are the
categories ordered (e.g. excellent, good, fair, poor) or just nominal, (e.g.
retail, service, manufacturing, wholesale)?  Are the continuous variables
distributed normally for each of the 4 levels of the categorical variable?
Are the variances the same?

While others have offered specific statistics, you must first formulate the
problem a little more specifically before a canidate can be evaluated.


> Any advice would be much appreciated.
>
-phil

--
     J. Philip Miller, Professor, Division of Biostatistics, Box 8067
	 Washington University Medical School, St. Louis MO 63110
	     phil@wubios.WUstl.edu - Internet  (314) 362-3617
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