Question

What would be an example of a negative correlation value? Please illustrate how the SPSS output would look like.

Answer 1

When two variables have a negative correlation, they have an inverse relationship. This means that as one variable increases, the other decreases, and vice versa. Negative correlations are indicated by a minus (-) sign in front of the correlation value.

Some examples of variables that are negatively correlated are:

• The weight of a car and miles per gallon: cars that are heavier tend to get less miles per gallon of gas.
• School achievement and days absent from school: people who miss more days of school tend to have lower GPAs.
• Vaccinations and illness: The more that people are vaccinated for a specific illness, the less that illness occurs.

Let us consider the data :

Student	GPA	Hours playing video games
1	4	0
2	2.5	15
3	4	3
4	3.9	5
5	3.75	5
6	3.8	0
7	2.9	13
8	3.1	8
9	3.25	7
10	3.4	8
11	3.3	9
12	3.9	12
13	3.95	1
14	3.65	7
15	3.55	5

If we find the correlation between GPA and Hours playing video games , SPSS Output would look like this :

Pearson Correlations
	GPA	Hours playing video games
GPA	1	-0.76945
Hours playing video games	-0.76945	1