Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Categorical & Cont
variables
- Nominal
- simplest and lowest level of measurement
- involves classifying observations into mutually exclusive categories
- Binary scales
- allocation of that individual to one of only two possible categories
- Male/Female
- smoker/non
- thus participants are assigned to a
named category such as 'male' or
'female'
- No particular order
- i.e Budhist, Monks....
- NAMES ONLY
- Ordinal
- ORDERED
- involves ranking of phenomena
- permits the numeric ranking of objects on the basis of their standing
relative to each other on a specified characteristic.
- organised along 'greater than and less than' dimensions
- only shows relative magnitude, not quantity
- discrete and conceptualised as having inherent order
- Mutually exclusive
- 1 = is completely dependant 2
= is needing another person's
assistance 3 = is needing
mechanical assistance 4 = is
completely independent.
- Only ranks doesn't tell whihc one is better
- Ratio
- represent the highest level of measurement
- Absolute zero point
- describe ratio properties between values as there is a true zero;
- have all of the characteristics of
nominal, ordinal and interval
measures
- Interval
- characteristics of both nominal and
ordinal data but also has the
characteristics of equal spacing
between categories
- indicates how much the categories differ;
- demonstrates equal amounts of change in a variable
between equivalent distances or intervals between
points on a scale
- does not measure absolute magnitude since the zero on interval scales is arbitrary
- the arbitrary zero does not mean there is 'nothing'
of the variable being measured; for example, an
IQ of zero does not mean zero intelligence – it just
means someone scored zero on an IQ test –
maybe because they couldn't read
- No true 0 makes it diff to compare ratios
- specify both the rank order of a
characteristics and the distance between
those objects.
- someone whose IQ increased from 100 to
110 has had the same IQ increase as
someone
- whose IQ has gone from 110 to 120 (i.e.
a 10-point increase in both cases).