Association (statistics)
In statistics, an association is any relationship between two measured quantities that renders them statistically dependent.[1] The term "association" refers broadly to any such relationship, whereas the narrower term "correlation" refers to a linear relationship between two quantities.
In quantitative research, the term "association" is often used to emphasize that a relationship being discussed is not necessarily causal (see correlation does not imply causation).
There are many statistical measures of association that can be used to infer the presence or absence of an association in a sample of data. Examples of such measures include the product moment correlation coefficient, used mainly for quantitative measurements, and the odds ratio, used for dichotomous measurements. Other measures of association are the distance correlation, tetrachoric correlation coefficient, Goodman and Kruskal's lambda, Tschuprow's T and Cramér's V. In information theory measures such as mutual information are used.
See also [edit]
References [edit]
- ^ Upton, G., Cook, I. (2006) Oxford Dictionary of Statistics, 2nd Edition, OUP. ISBN 978-0-19-954145-4
