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Home > Statistics Every Writer Should Know > The Stats Board > Discusssion

Difference btw. point biserial and biserial correlation
Message posted by Wong Su Luan on October 1, 1999 at 12:00 AM (ET)

I am not sure what is the difference between point biserial correlation and biserial correlation. Is it right that point biserial correlation is actually item-total correlation?


READERS RESPOND:
(In chronological order. Most recent at the bottom.)

Re: Difference btw. point biserial and biserial correlation
Message posted by JG on October 3, 1999 at 12:00 AM (ET)

What is 'biserial correlation ? In what area of application is it used ?


Re: Difference btw. point biserial and biserial correlation
Message posted by Bill on October 4, 1999 at 12:00 AM (ET)

Dichotomous variables can be either a discrete/true dichotomy or a continuous/artificial one. Examples of discrete dichotomies are male vs female, dead vs alive. There is no underlying continuum between the groups. Continuous or artificial dichotomies are those which we assume there to be an underlying continuum but we assign individuals to a category based on some arbitrary criterion. Examples of this artificial dichotomy are pass vs fail (based on some cutoff score on a test) or short vs tall (based on some arbitrary height). A point-biserial and biserial correlation is used to correlate a dichotomy with an interval scaled variable. The difference is that the point-biserial correlation is used when the dichotomous variable is a true or discrete dichotomy and the biserial correlation is used with an artificial dichotomy.


Re: Difference btw. point biserial and biserial correlation
Message posted by Muayyad Ahmad on March 13, 2000 at 12:00 AM (ET)

please,could you tell how to do point biserial correlation using SPSS.



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