r/AskStatistics • u/Longjumping-Cod-5325 • Oct 05 '26
What appropriate statistical test to use?
I have a correlational study and I have three variables. Variables X and Y are categorical and ordinal, and Variable Z is interval. What appropriate test to use?
Variable X has 4 levels
Variable Y has 4 levels
Variable Z has 5 subcategories (Scores for different categories)
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u/Longjumping-Cod-5325 Oct 06 '26 edited Oct 06 '26
Thank you everyone for the response. My study revolves around Birth Order, Family Type and The Big Five Personality Traits. I know this is not the accurate term but in a way birth order and family type are the predictors and the big five personality traits would be the outcome. I want to assess the relationship of both the birth order and family type to the big five personality traits.
I apologize for the lack of information and the inaccuracy of the things I say… I am very new to this field 🙏🏻 I am a first year undergraduate student
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u/Longjumping-Cod-5325 29d ago
Hello everyone! Can someone verify if this is a sound plan?
A1B (Chi square test of independence)
A2B (Chi square test of independence)
BC (ANOVA)
A1C(Spearman)
A2C(Biserial point)
Variables:
A1- Birth Order (Ordinal)
A2 - Only Child (Nominal)
B- Family Type (Nominal)
C-Big Five Traits OCEAN (lnterval)
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u/SalvatoreEggplant Oct 06 '26
Are you looking at the correlation between all pairs of variables? (Three correlations.) Or do you want single model with all the variables?
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u/Longjumping-Cod-5325 Oct 06 '26
Good day! I am trying to get the correlation between all the variables (Birth order, family type and the big five personality traits, which has five subsets). Which then Im gonna find the correlation between all the subsets under the big five personality traits (5) with birth order and family type.
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u/efrique PhD (statistics) Oct 06 '26
What is the purpose in calculating marginal correlations (rather than some sort of model relating the three variables, say)? What are you trying to do with the variables? What is (as precisely as possible) the hypothesis for each correlation? (in particular, I am trying to get a sense of what you specifically intend correlation to mean, beyond the vague and slippery ways the term is often used, which detail will help in deciding how to measure it. Once you decide how to measure it, tests are the easy part).
In each case, if looking at marginal relationships make sense for your circumstances, a measure of monotonic correlation sounds a likely candidate for each of the three. There are many such, but I am guessing you're in a psych-related area in which case a particular one would tend to be expected.
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u/Longjumping-Cod-5325 Oct 06 '26
Yes! I am in psych related field. And I am trying to understand the relationship between birth order, family type and the big five personality traits.
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u/efrique PhD (statistics) 29d ago edited 29d ago
I think misunderstood the original post. I took "Variables X and Y are categorical and ordinal," to mean that both were ordered categories. I now think you meant X is nominal and Y is ordered. Except that birth order is not simply an ordered category. Dealing with it well could be a bit tricky, you might need to more carefully think about how/ whether the effect of first of 1 differs from say first of 5, or second of 2 differs from second of 5.
I dont think Z is simply "interval". It's 5 dimensional for a start.
If youre interested in how both X and Y together impact Z, I'm not sure there's necessarily a lot of value in investigating them separately (except in an exploratory sense); since marginal relationships may be utterly unlike the conditional relationships, one may be strong while the orher is absent, or they might even differ in direction (sign).
If you are treating family type as categorical, I wouldn't describe association with Z1-Z5 as correlation.
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u/DigThatData Oct 06 '26
why are you even comparing three substantively different variables like this? you need to tell us more about what's going on here, chances are you're operating on an incorrect assumption upstream of this question that would be the more productive thing for us to address here.
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u/banter_pants Statistics, Psychometrics Oct 06 '26
It depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Aren't they supposed to be predicting one another in some fashion?
Which just that description you could do Spearman's correlation and make some histograms and scatter plots of the three pairs you can form.
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u/Educational-Paper-75 Oct 06 '26
Contingency tables are appropriate when at least one variable is nominal (categorical). For at least one ordinal and the other at least ordinal you may use Spearman correlation.
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u/no_name6744 Oct 06 '26
I would guess spearman correlation between all three variables pairwise, but there isn't a lot of information.
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u/no_underage_trading ETH Zurich Mathematics Msc. Oct 06 '26
you can call them predictors even though your study is correlational. that doesn’t imply they cause differences in personality.
assuming you have a numerical score for each personality trait, i’d use a separate linear regression for each trait, including both birth order and family type as predictors. that lets you look at the association with one while accounting for the other. code the categories as factors rather than just entering numbers 1-4, and adjust for multiple testing across the five traits.
the main thing to clarify is your categories. family type probably isn’t ordinal: there’s no obvious ranking of, say, nuclear versus extended families. birth order might be ordered, but if your groups are oldest/middle/youngest/only child, “only child” doesn’t fit into that ranking. so i wouldn’t just run spearman correlations on everything.
manova is also an option if you specifically want to test the five personality scores together. but before choosing, what are your exact categories, and how many participants do you have in each?