e-Articles (Chapter 3)

Here are some full-length research articles that illustrate the use of bivariate correlation. To view any article, simply click on its title. (NOTE: No claim is made that these articles are perfect in all respects. By carefully reviewing them, you will hone your skills at being able both to decipher and to critique statistically-based research reports.)

Alcohol Policy Enforcement and Changes in Student Drinking Rates in a Statewide Public College System: A Follow-Up Study

Pearson's product-moment correlation was used to assess the bivariate relationship between the strength of the alcohol policy at 11 colleges and the change in heavy student drinking. See the 1st sentence in the 5th paragraph of the "Data analysis" portion of the "Methods" section, the 1st paragraph of "Alcohol Enforcement Policy and Student Drinking Trends" in the "Results" section, and the scatterplot shown in Figure 1.

Impact of a Student Response System on Short- and Long-Term Learning in a Drug Literature Evaluation Course

Illustrates the use of the point-biserial correlation. In this study, the researchers used r_pb to correlate students' performance on each of a test's individual items with their performance on the test as a whole. (Such correlations should be high if items are "good" in the sense that they discriminate between test-takers who have high vs. low scores on the test.) See the 3rd paragraph of the "Results" section of the article, as well as Table 3.

Correlation of Preadmission Organic Chemistry Courses and Academic Performance in Biochemistry at a Midwest Chiropractic Doctoral Program

Illustrates the use of Pearson's correlation. See the 1st sentence of the portion of the "Abstract" dealing with "Results," the 2nd paragraph of the "Introduction," the 3rd paragraph of the "Methods" section, the 2nd paragraph of "Results," and the 2nd paragraph of the "Discussion.

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Schuyler W. Huck
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