Suppose a researcher wants to explain attitudes towards a respondent's city of residence in terms of duration of residence in the city

The attitude is measured on an 11-point scale and the duration of residence is measured in terms of the number of years the respondent has lived in the city. In a pretest of 12 respondents, the calculated t value for the correlation coefficient based on the data given is 8.414. The critical value of t for a two-tailed test and ? = 0.05 is 2.228. r = .9361. What is the null hypothesis for this scenario? What do the results mean in terms of the null hypothesis and the correlation coefficient, r?

The null hypothesis of no relationship between X and Y is rejected. This along with the positive sign of r, indicates that attitude toward the city is positively related to the duration of residence in the city. Moreover, the high value of r indicates that this relationship is strong. If this were a large and representative sample, the implication would be that managers, city officials, and politicians wishing to reach people with a favorable attitude toward the city should target long-time residents of that city.