Correction for attenuation
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Correction for attenuation is a statistical procedure, due to Spearman, to "rid a correlation coefficient from the weakening effect of measurement error" (Jensen, 1998).
Given two random variables X and Y, with correlation rxy, and a known reliability for each variable, rxx and ryy, the correlation between X and Y corrected for attenuation is .
How well the variables are measured affects the correlation of X and Y. The correction for attenuation tells you what the correlation would be if you could measure X and Y with perfect reliability.
If X and Y are taken to be imperfect measurements of underlying variables X' and Y' with independent errors, then rx'y' measures the true correlation between X' and Y'.
[edit] Derivation
[edit] References
- Jensen, A.R. (1998). The g Factor. Praeger, Connecticut, USA.