Scope of Measurements

Question 1

Statement 1: Temperature, as measured in Degrees Celsius, is an interval measurement.
Statement 2: In an art competition, there is one winner decided by the judges, one second place decided by the judges, and a separate “people’s choice” winner, decided on by the public. The rest of the entries are designated “losers”. This is an example of an ordinal scale.

(a) Both statements are true.
(b) Statement 1 true; Statement 2 false.
(c) Statement 1 false; Statement 2 true.
(d) Both statements false.

Answer 1

The answer was b. Temperature in Degrees Celsius is indeed interval, because the distance between points of the scale is meaningful and yet the zero point is effectively arbitrary.Statement 2 is false because to be an ordinal scale there has to be a clear rank order of the categories. In this example, this is not explained where in any rank order the “people’s choice” would sit (is it better than second place as decided by the judges?). That means you can’t put the categories into a rank order, which means you can’t analyse them as an ordinal scale, therefore we would need to treat them as a nominal scale.