Describe the four different scale types. Give an example of each, and explain when it should be used.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Ans: The four different scale types are nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio. An example of a nominal scale data would be gender. In order to use gender as a variable, the levels of male and female would need to be given numbers one and two to make them quantifiable. At the same time, there is no real quantity to this data; it is just a label. An example of ordinal data would be class rankings. We would label the top person in a class as one, the next as two, and so on. In this case, we would know that the top person had a higher GPA than the second person, but we do not know how much of a difference there is. The interval data has rankings but adds equal intervals. The only thing missing is a true zero. For example, the scores on a Likert scale yield interval level data. There is no real zero unless the person just did not answer any questions, but that zero score would not tell us anything about the person’s opinions. Finally, ratio level data has the characteristics of the prior scales but adds the true zero. An example of this is cost—free is free.