Psychology 242 - Homework
Due in your next discussion section

Here are data from 25 people who participated in the Psych 242 Love Test. I have given you the number of years that each person has been married to the person in question, as well as their Love Score (based on one section's way of operationalizing love). The Love Score can range from 1 to 7, where higher scores mean more love. I have also given you the "years married" scores and the love scores in z-score or standardized form.

The big question we want to answer is, What is the relationship between the amount of time people have been married and the degree to which they love that person? To answer this question, I want you to do the following:

1. Create a scatterplot to illustrate the relationship between these two variables. Place the years married variable on the x-axis (i.e., the horizontal axis) and Love Scores on the y-axis (i.e., the vertical axis).

2. Based on your visual inspection of the scatter plot, does it look like the two variables are related to one another in a positive, negative, or zero-like manner?

3. Compute the correlation (r) between these two variables in order to get a quantitative number that summarizes the relationship between these variables. I have given you the z-scores, which will make your computations easy. Remember, to compute a correlation, all you need to do is multiply each person's z-scores together (for the first person, you would multiply -.7 and -.3 together to obtain .21) and then average all of those products.

4. Is the correlation positive or negative? Is it close to zero (say, within .10 of zero)? How would you verbally summarize the correlation between these two variables?