Spearman's rank or Pearson's correlation coefficient?

[CharlotteJ]

This isn't a GIS question so much but I'd like to correlate the percentage of the population of census output areas who are children with mean distances to green spaces, but am unsure whether to use Spearman's Rank or the Pearson's Correlation Coefficient. I understand that Spearman's rank is best used for ordinal variables, which I don't think either of these 2 are, so perhaps it's better to use Pearson's? But then I've also read that Pearson's is better used when the relationship between variables is linear which I'm not sure it is in this case, so I'm unsure which option's better. Any advice would be much appreciated.

[CharlotteJ]

Ok then Yes, it sounds like using chi makes more sense. My advisor wasn't sure which test would be best to use so I thought I'd just discuss it again with her once I'd decided which one would be more suitable. Ah ok then, thank you, I'll take a look at that website!

[CharlotteJ]

And thank you for your help

[DanPatterson_Retired]

PS let me know if you want me to check over your calculations.  You can reach me on my profile link, it goes to my university account which I can access anywhere

[CharlotteJ]

Oh thank you, that's great