Math study?

Question

A social worker investigating the relationship between income levels and infant- mortality rates studied 45 random families and found that the correlation coefficient was -0.524. Does this indicate a strong negative relationship between income levels and infant mortality rates?

Answer 1

it says that there is a somewhat strong relationship between the two. this -.524 means nothing.

what you need is the coeficient of determination. this value will determine the relationship between the two. you get this figure by squaring it as in multiply .524 x .524 = .276. then you get a coefficient of determination, which interprets your data more by explaining that the the relation between income and mortality rates have a weak relationship, which means (go further if your doing statistics with your regression analysis) income doesn't mean a thing when it comes to how long infants live.

if you are doing a report, i suggest multiple regression, then you can have more data to see if it effects infant mortality rates, plus your conclusion will be more precise.

good luck.

Answer 2

Interpretation of the size of a correlation
Correlation Negative Positive
Small −0.29 to −0.10 0.10 to 0.29
Medium −0.49 to −0.30 0.30 to 0.49
Large −1.00 to −0.50 0.50 to 1.00

Several authors have offered guidelines for the interpretation of a correlation coefficient. Cohen (1988),[4] for example, has suggested the following interpretations for correlations in psychological research, in the table on the right.
As Cohen himself has observed, however, all such criteria are in some ways arbitrary and should not be observed too strictly. This is because the interpretation of a correlation coefficient depends on the context and purposes. A correlation of 0.9 may be very low if one is verifying a physical law using high-quality instruments, but may be regarded as very high in the social sciences where there may be a greater contribution from complicating factors.
I copied this from the source... hope it helps.