Null Hypothesis Testing with Pearson's r When to Use This is
straightforward. Do this when you have a sample value of
Pearson’s r and you want to test the null hypothesis that the
value of r in the population is zero. For example, imagine that
each of 50 subjects judges the intelligence level of a stimulus
person on a 1 to 7 scale and also rates their mood on a 0 to 10
scale. Imagine also that for this sample of 50 subjects,
Pearson’s r is +.23. We want to test the null hypothesis that
Pearson’s r in the population is actually 0 and that this sample
correlation of .23 represents nothing more than sampling error.
The Test Statistic The test statistic in this case is t.
However, this statistic is not usually computed or reported.
Instead, we can proceed straight to a table (see below). The p
Value p is the probability of a value of Pearson’s r as extreme
as the one you got if the null hypothesis were true. Again, you
do not have to figure out the exact p value. Instead, you can
just figure out whether p is lowe