SPSS® 12.0 Command Syntax Reference

Basic Specification
CORRELATIONS 273
• The basic specification is the VARIABLES subcommand, which specifies the variables to
be analyzed. The actual keyword VARIABLES can be omitted.
• By default, CORRELATIONS produces a matrix of correlation coefficients. The number of
cases and the significance level are displayed for each coefficient. The significance level
is based on a two-tailed test.
Subcommand Order
• The VARIABLES subcommand must be first.
• The remaining subcommands can be specified in any order.
Operations
• The correlation of a variable with itself is displayed as 1.0000.
• A correlation that cannot be computed is displayed as a period (.).
• CORRELATIONS does not execute if long or short string variables are specified on the
variable list.
Limitations
Example
• Maximum 40 variable lists.
• Maximum 500 variables total per command.
• Maximum 250 syntax elements. Each individual occurrence of a variable name, keyword,
or special delimiter counts as 1 toward this total. Variables implied by the TO keyword do
not count toward this total.
CORRELATIONS VARIABLES=FOOD RENT PUBTRANS TEACHER COOK ENGINEER
/VARIABLES=FOOD RENT WITH COOK TEACHER MANAGER ENGINEER
/MISSING=INCLUDE.
• The first VARIABLES subcommand requests a square matrix of correlation coefficients
among variables FOOD, RENT, PUBTRANS, TEACHER, COOK, and ENGINEER.
• The second VARIABLES subcommand requests a rectangular correlation matrix in which
FOOD and RENT are the row variables and COOK, TEACHER, MANAGER, and ENGINEER
are the column variables.
• MISSING requests that user-missing values be included in the computation of each coefficient.