I have to collect and then analyse a large dataset. A particular data input (continuous variable) is laborious to collect and I believe that an ordinal category (1,2,3,4) would correlate closely with this continuous variable. I want to test this after collecting 10% of the data including the continuous variable, and provided there is a correlation, proceed to collect the other 90% of the data without collecting the continuous variable (simplifying my data collection greatly). At this stage I am not sure if the data will be normally distributed.

What is the appropriate statistical test to do this properly?

Thanks for any help

I have to collect and then analyse a large dataset. A particular data input (continuous variable) is laborious to collect and I believe that an ordinal category (1,2,3,4) would correlate closely with this continuous variable. I want to test this after collecting 10% of the data including the continuous variable, and provided there is a correlation, proceed to collect the other 90% of the data without collecting the continuous variable (simplifying my data collection greatly). At this stage I am not sure if the data will be normally distributed.

What is the appropriate statistical test to do this properly?