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IJE Advance Access originally published online on January 28, 2009
International Journal of Epidemiology 2009 38(2):337-341; doi:10.1093/ije/dyn357
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Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association © The Author 2009; all rights reserved.

Ecological Correlations and the Behavior of Individuals*

WS Robinson1

1 University of California at Los Angeles.

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.


   INTRODUCTION
 
AN INDIVIDUAL CORRELATION is a correlation in which the statistical object or thing described is indivisible. The correlation between color and illiteracy for persons in the United States, shown later in Table I, is an individual correlation, because the kind of thing described is an indivisible unit, a person. In an individual correlation the variables are descriptive properties of individuals, such as height, income, eye color, or race, and not descriptive statistical constants such as rates or means.

In an ecological correlation the statistical object is a group of persons. The correlation between the percentage of the population which is Negro and the percentage of the population which is illiterate for the 48 states, shown later as Figure 2, is an ecological correlation. The thing described is the population of a state, and not a single individual. The variables are percentages, descriptive properties of groups, and not descriptive properties . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   The Anatomy of an ecological correlation
 

   Conclusion
 

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