Levels of Measurement

Question 1

Outline nominal data.

Answer 1

Data being sorted into categories, and then the frequency being counted.

For example, how many days of the week were rainy and sunny.

Crudest type of data - most uninformative type of data.

For example, it doesn’t tell us how rainy or sunny each day was hour by hour.

Question 2

Outline ordinal data.

Answer 2

Involves ranking data into place order, with rating scales often being used to achieve this.

For example, first, second and third in an athletics race. It shows which athletes are better than others, but doesn’t tell us about distances between athletes.

It is more informative than nominal data, but still lacks being fully informative. The distance between first and second may be shorter than between second and third.

Question 3

Outline interval data.

Answer 3

Standardised measurement units like time, weight, and distance are all interval/ ratio data and are the most informative and accurate.

Use equal measurement intervals. For example, one second in time is the same length as any other second in time.