Rarely is role playing viewed as the effective and useful coaching tool that it is. When set up and used correctly, role playing is one of the most helpful ways to train and develop your employees.
Correlation analysis is used primarily as a data exploration technique to reveal the degree of association in a set of matched data. This information can inform subsequent analyses of relationships between variables. In particular, correlation can indicate possible factors that confound a relationship of interest.
In a correlation study, the researcher or research team does not have control over the variables in the study. The researcher simply measures the data that she finds in the world. This allows her to see if the two variables are correlated -- whether changes in one are associated with changes in the other.