In an exam I may have to calculate Spearman's Rho by hand which I have no problem with. An example I was given had 2 variables: grade and age group which had 5 pieces of data each, I calculated the correlation coefficient of -0.6. I'm also given a critical values table which looks like this:
how do I interpret it to see if it's significant?
Best Answer
When $N = 5$ as you have, your Spearman's $\rho$ value of -.6 is not statistically significant at any of the $\alpha$-levels in the table.
Assuming you were doing a two-tailed test, with an $\alpha$ of .20, the critical value for Spearman's $\rho$ would be .70. The absolute value of $\rho$ is .6 and it is less than the critical value, hence it is not statistically significant.
And this is the smallest critical value in the table.