Intraclass rank tests for independence

Abstract

SUMMARY An intraclass rank test of Spearman type is proposed to test for independence in a bivariate population. The test is useful when there is prior information that the population has the same marginal distributions. It is shown that the proposed test is asymptotically equivalent to Spearman's test under the null hypothesis of independence and its contiguous alternatives and is empirically better than that in the case of small sample sizes.