Question

Suppose you are interested in measuring people’s weight. Provide an example of a nominal, an ordinal, an interval, and ratio scale that would accomplish this.

Answer 1

There are four scales of measurement: nominal scale,ordinal scale, interval scale and ratio scale.

Weight is considered as a quantitative data and it therefore falls under the category of ratio scale.

a. Nomina scale- in this scale, categories are nominated names, there is no inherent order between categories. One cannot say that a particular category is superior or better than other.

eg:- Gender, Religion

b. Ordinal scale- the various categories can be logically arranged in a meaningful order. However, the difference between the categories is not meaningful.

eg:- Ranks

c. Interval scale- the values can be ordered and have a meaningful difference, but doubling is not meaningful because of the absence of an absolute zero.

eg:- The Celsius scale- the difference between 40 degree C and 50 degree C is the same between 20 C and 30 C. Besides, 50 degree C is hotter than 40 degree C. However, 20 degree C is not half as hot as 40 degree C (doubling is not meaningful).

d. Ratio scale- the values can be ordered, have a meaningful difference and doubling is also meaningful. There is an absolute zero.

eg:- weight and height

( 100 kg is twice as heavy as 50 kg, thd difference between 45kg and 55kg is same as that between 105 kg angd 95kg. Values can be arranged in an order ( ascending/ descending).