SpringerLink
Log in

Rank-Order Correlation

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research

  • 46 Accesses

Synonyms

Correlation of ordinal variables

Definition

A rank-order correlation is a correlation between two variables whose values are ranks.

Description

When variables are measured at least on ordinal scales, units of observation (e.g., individuals, nations, organizations, values) can be ranked. A ranking is an ordering of units of observations with respect to an attribute of interest. For example, nations can be ranked with respect to their quality of life, their freedom, their tightness or looseness, etc. A rank is the position of a unit of observation (e.g., nation) in the ranking. Units of observation with higher ranks show the attribute of interest to a higher degree. Ranks are often assigned in such a way that the smaller rank values indicate “better” behavior. For example, the winner of a marathon run gets rank one. From the scope of measurement theory, the construct measured by this type of ranking would be “slowness,” because a higher rank indicates that a person needed more...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Agresti, A. (2010). Analysis of ordinal categorical data (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gibbons, J. D., & Chakraborti, S. (2011). Nonparametric statistical inference (5th ed.). Boca Raton: CRC Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goodman, L. A., & Kruskal, W. H. (1954). Measures of association for cross classifications. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 49, 732–764.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kendall, M. G., & Gibbons, J. D. (1990). Rank correlation methods. London: Arnold.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kim, J. (1971). Predictive measures of ordinal association. The American Journal of Sociology, 76, 891–907.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Olsson, U. (1979). Maximum likelihood estimation of the polychoric correlation coefficient. Psychometrika, 44, 443–460.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Somers, R. H. (1962). A new asymmetric measure of association for ordinal variables. American Sociological Review, 27, 799–811.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Spearman, C. S. (1904). The proof and measurement of association. The American Journal of Psychology, 15, 72–101.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, T. P. (1974). Measures of association for bivariate ordinal hypotheses. In H. M. Blalock (Ed.), Measurement in the social science: Theories and strategies (pp. 327–342). Chicago: Aldine Publishing.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Woods, C. M. (2007). Confidence intervals for gamma-family measures of ordinal association. Psychological Methods, 12, 185–204.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Education and Psychology, Free University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Michael Eid

Authors
  1. Michael Eid
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael Eid .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Scienze Statistiche, Sapienza Università di Roma, Roma, Roma, Italy

    Filomena Maggino

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Statistics and Quantitative Methods, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy

    Marco Fattore

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2023 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Eid, M. (2023). Rank-Order Correlation. In: Maggino, F. (eds) Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17299-1_2406

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation