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A New Measure of Non-Parametric Correlation for Variables in the Likert Scale

Shubhabrata Das
2025
Working Paper No
716
Body

We propose a new measure of nonparametric correlation that is especially suited for measuring association between variables measured in the Likert scale where data is ordinal and tied observations are extremely common. The proposed general structure of the measure is based on graded level of concordance and discordance between the pairs of metrics. The general form of the measure has all the desirable properties except the measure is not necessarily zero for independent variables. This limitation is acceptable given only ordinal nature of the metrics. Three versions of the measure are studied. The first is based on simple equi-distant weights. In the other two variations, the measure attains the zero value under certain conditions of independence. In developing these two versions, linear and non-linear optimization techniques are adopted and their equivalence is demonstrated
in finding the suitable weights.

Key words
Association, Constrained optimization, Fully-concordant, Fully-discordant, Greatly-concordant, Greatlydiscordant, Highly-concordant, Highly-discordant, Independent, Mildly-concordant, Mildly-discordant, Nonparametric, Ties.
WP No. 716.pdf (544.73 KB)

A New Measure of Non-Parametric Correlation for Variables in the Likert Scale

Author(s) Name: Shubhabrata Das, 2025
Working Paper No : 716
Abstract:

We propose a new measure of nonparametric correlation that is especially suited for measuring association between variables measured in the Likert scale where data is ordinal and tied observations are extremely common. The proposed general structure of the measure is based on graded level of concordance and discordance between the pairs of metrics. The general form of the measure has all the desirable properties except the measure is not necessarily zero for independent variables. This limitation is acceptable given only ordinal nature of the metrics. Three versions of the measure are studied. The first is based on simple equi-distant weights. In the other two variations, the measure attains the zero value under certain conditions of independence. In developing these two versions, linear and non-linear optimization techniques are adopted and their equivalence is demonstrated
in finding the suitable weights.

Keywords: Association, Constrained optimization, Fully-concordant, Fully-discordant, Greatly-concordant, Greatlydiscordant, Highly-concordant, Highly-discordant, Independent, Mildly-concordant, Mildly-discordant, Nonparametric, Ties.
WP No. 716.pdf (544.73 KB)