Measurement is central to any inquiry.
The greater the refinement in the unit of measurement of a
variable, the greater the
confidence, other things being equal, one can place in the
findings.
S.S.Stevens has classified the different types of into four
categories:
• Nominal or
classificatory scale
• Ordinal or ranking
scale
• Interval scale
• Ratio scale
The nominal or classificatory scale:
A nominal scale enables the classification of individuals,
objects or responses into
subgroups based on a
common/shared property or characteristic.
A variable measured on a nominal scale may have one, two or
more subcategories
depending upon the extent of variation.
For example, ’water’ or ‘tree’ have only one subgroup,
whereas the variable “gender”
can be classified into two sub-categories: male and female.
‘Hotels’ can be classified
into ---- sub-categories.
The sequence in which subgroups are listed makes no
difference as there is no
relationship among subgroups.
The ordinal
or ranking scale:
Besides categorizing individuals, objects, responses or a
property into subgroups on
the basis of common characteristic, it ranks the subgroups
in a certain order.
They are arranged either in ascending or descending order
according to the extent a
subcategory reflects the magnitude of variation in the
variable.
For example, ‘income’ can be measured either quantitatively
(in rupees and paise) or
qualitatively using subcategories ‘above average’, ‘average’
and ‘below average’. The
‘distance’ between these subcategories are not equal as
there is no quantitative unit of
measurement.
‘Socioeconomic status’ and ‘attitude’ are other variables
that can be measured on
ordinal scale.
The interval
scale:
An interval scale has all the characteristics of an ordinal
scale. In addition, it uses a
unit of measurement with an arbitrary starting and
terminating points.
The ratio
scale:
A ratio scale has all the properties of nominal, ordinal and
interval scales plus its own
property:the zero point of a ratio scale is fixed, which
means it has a fixed starting
point. Since the difference between intervals is always
measured from a zero point,
this scale can be used for mathematical operations.
The measurement of variables like income, age, height and
weight are examples of this scale.
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