Measuring Association

Measuring association between variables, in some form or another, is really what social scientists use statistics for the most. Establishing whether two variables are related to one another can help to affirm or cast doubt on theories about the social world. Does substance use improve an adolescent’s popularity in school? Does increasing wealth in a country lead to more or less environmental degradation? Does income inequality inhibit voter participation? These are just a few of the questions one could ask that require a measurement of the association between two or more variables.

In this module, we will learn about how to visualize and measure association between two variables. How we do this depends on the kinds of variables that we have. There are three possibilities:

• two categorical variables
• one categorical and one quantitative variable
• two quantitative variables

Each of these cases requires that we learn and master different techniques. In the three sections that follow, we will learn how to measure association for all three cases.

Slides for this module can be found here.

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