How to do correlation between likert and binary variables I want to look at whether socioeconomic status influences students’ self-efficacy in science subjects.
My socioeconomic questions are yes/no questions or choice out of a list of parental occupation
The self-efficacy questions are likert scales (e.g Learning advanced science topics would be easy for me - strongly agree to strongly disagree)
What is the best statistical test to use on SPSS to answer my research question? VERY VERY new to stats.

A possible correlation coefficient would be the polychoric correlation, which is intended for two ordinal variables. Keep in mind that it assumes that your variables were originally normal (and continuous) and were later discretized - if you cannot take this assumption, don't use it.
As far as I know there is no closed form formula for the polychoric correlation, but an approximation can be found here. The method is implemented in SPSS, as well as in R and SAS.
