Testing equality of correlation coefficients in two populations via permutation methods

Abstract

The present paper investigates the asymptotic behaviour of a studentized permutation test for testing equality of (Pearson) correlation coefficients in two populations. It is shown that this test is asymptotically of exact level and has the same power for contiguous alternatives as the corresponding asymptotic test.

As a by-product we specify the assumptions needed for the validity of the permutation test suggested in Sakaori (2002). A small simulation study compares the finite sample properties of the considered tests.

Keywords

• Behrens-Fisher problem
• Contiguous alternatives
• Permutation tests
• Pearson correlation coefficient
• Power of a test
• Studentized statistics
• Two-sample tests