I have two variables: one labeled D is my dependent variable, and one labeled as I is my independent variable (according to my hypothesis). In order to test my hypothesis that a respondent's attitude towards "D" is dependent on their attitude to "I", I want to test it with a statistical measure. Since it is an ordinal scale, I supposed Spearman to be the right choice.
I've read that in order to do a Spearman your variables must have a monotonic relationship. I made a scatterplot and I don't really know if the result is monotonic (see picture)
It does not look like the "school-book" picture of a monotonic relationship, but maybe it is all right? The scatterplot seems to indicate some form of relationship between the two variables.
I made Spearman and it turned out like this: 
Are the results from this Spearman test useable at all? Does my variables meet the condition of being monotonic?
(The data I am analyzing are survey data from a survey which went out to 141 people with 72 answering.)
Best Answer
I'm not sure where you read that a relationship must already be monotone before you look at Spearman's $\rho$, but the whole point of calculating a rank correlation is to see if it is (i.e., you don't already know a priori). So yes, the value you calculated has meaning independent of any assumptions one might have about the data.