ABSTRACT
In some cases researchers are not only interested in assessing the strength of the linear relationship between two continuous variables X and Y, but they would also like to predict the values of Y, on the basis of their knowledge about the X variable. In this case, the appropriate statistical tool is linear regression analysis. The main aim of this analysis is to estimate a linear equation of the form y = a + bx so that the relationship between X and Y can be plotted as a straight line (called a regression line), and the values of the dependent variable Y can be predicted using the values of the independent variable X. This chapter will describe how to perform a simple linear regression analysis on two continuous variables.
