Point Biserial & Biserial correlation

Presenter: Saeed Majidi E-mail: saeed.majidi@hotmail.com

Correlation

Befor introducing Biserial and point Biserial correlation, that would be a good idea to first introduce two terms; Correlation and pearson producuct moment correlation.
Correlation:
The common usage of the word correlation refers to a relationship between two or more objects (ideas ,variables...). In statistics, the word correlation refers to the relationship between two variables. This relationship refers to, measure its strength, develop an equation for predicting scores, and ultimately draw testable conclusion about the parent population. We have two kinds of correlations: 1. Negative correlation: As one variable increases, the other decreases 2. Positive correlation: where the two variables react in the same

Pearson Product Moment

Pearson

Product Moment:

An important aspects of correlation is how strong it is. The strength of a correlation is measured by the correlation coefficient r. Another name for r is the Pearson product moment correlation coefficient.
NOTE:
The closer r is to +1, the stronger the positive correlation is. The closer r is to -1, the stronger the negative correlation is. If |r| = 1 exactly, the two variables are perfectly correlated! So we can say that temperature in Celsius and Fahrenheit are perfectly correlated.

Point-Biserial Correlation
The Point-Biserial correlation coefficient, referred to as rpb, is a special case of Pearson in which one variable is quantitative and the other variable is dichotomous and nominal. The calculations simplify since typically the values 1 (presence) and 0 (absence) are used for the dichotomous variable. This simplification is sometimes expressed as follows: rpb = (Y1 - Y0) sqrt(pq) / Y where Y0 and Y1 are the Y score means for data pairs with an x score of 0 and 1, respectively, q = 1 - p and p are the proportions of data pairs with x scores of 0 and 1, respectively, and Y is the population standard deviation for the y data. An example usage might be to determine if one gender accomplished some task significantly better than the other gender.

Biserial Correlation Coefficient The Biserial correlation coefficient, termed r is similar to the
b

point Biserial, but pits quantitative data against ordinal data, but ordinal data with an underlying continuity but measured discretely as two values (dichotomous). An example might be test performance vs. anxiety, where anxiety is designated as either high or low. Presumably, anxiety can take on any value inbetween, perhaps beyond, but it may be difficult to measure. We further assume that anxiety is normally distributed. The formula is very similar to the point-Biserial but yet different: where Y0 and Y1 are the Y score means for data pairs with an x score of 0 and 1, respectively, q = 1 - p and p are the proportions of data pairs with x scores of 0 and 1, respectively, and Y is the population standard deviation for the y data, and Y is the height of the standardized normal distribution at the point z, where P(z'<z)=q and P(z'>z)=p. NOTE: Since the factor involving p, q, and the height is always greater than 1, the biserial is always greater than the point-biserial.

Thank you for paying attention