# Correlation b/w continuous and categorical variables in SAS?

#### cardinal

##### New Member
I would like to look at the correlation of a hormone level (continuous variable) and a genotype activity (categorical variable with the following levels:COMT-low, COMT-high, and COMT-intermediate). How should I do this in SAS?

Thanks!

PS I have done the polyserial correlation but that doesn't make sense to me!

#### hlsmith

##### Omega Contributor
You might get away with Spearman rank order if the genotype activity can be construed as ordinal (e.g., recoded: 1, 2, 3).

That would mean using something like

Code:
PROC CORR DATA=yours / SPEARMAN;
P.S., What is the purpose of this analysis? What are your trying to say? Could regression be used? It took me awhile to tell myself that I can just use linear regression instead of correlations and logistic regression instead of contingency tables sometimes. Which these approaches have more options and at times better interpretability.

#### cardinal

##### New Member
Thanks for your reply. I want to look at the correlation between methylated estrogen levels (continuous variable) and Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) genotype activity. COMT activity can high, intermediate, or low activity.
It looks like my most appropriate option here is to treat COMT activity as an ordinal variable and do a spearman corr test.

You might get away with Spearman rank order if the genotype activity can be construed as ordinal (e.g., recoded: 1, 2, 3).

That would mean using something like

Code:
PROC CORR DATA=yours / SPEARMAN;
P.S., What is the purpose of this analysis? What are your trying to say? Could regression be used? It took me awhile to tell myself that I can just use linear regression instead of correlations and logistic regression instead of contingency tables sometimes. Which these approaches have more options and at times better interpretability.