At first glance, all types of measurement scales may seem similar and you might think that some easily replace others, but when you study them in depth, you realize the diversity of their nature and the different ways of using them to obtain different results.
In this article we will present the most relevant types of market research and what each one consists of.
What types of measurement scales exist?
In statistics, there are four types of data measurement scales : nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio. Below we will explain each one in detail:
1. Nominal scale
The nominal scale is used to label variables without any quantitative value, they are mutually exclusive (do not overlap) and none of them has numerical meaning.
A good way to remember all this is that “nominal” sounds a lot like “name,” and nominal scales are sort of like “names” or labels.
2. Ordinal scale
In the ordinal scale , what is important and significant is the order of the senegal phone number values, but the differences between each of them are not really known.
“Ordinal” is easy to remember because it sounds like “order,” and that’s the key thing to remember with “ordinal scales”: it’s the order that matters, but that’s all you get out of them.
Also see: Nominal Scale and Ordinal Scale What is the difference?
3. Interval Scale
The interval scale is a numerical scale in which we know both the order and the exact differences between the values.
The classic example of an interval scale is Celsius temperature because the difference between each value is the same.
Interval scales are nice because they open up the scope for statistical analysis of these data sets. For example, central tendency can be measured by the mean, median, and mode ; the standard deviation can also be calculated .
Like everyone else, you can remember the key points of an interval scale fairly easily. “Interval” itself means “space between,” which is the important thing to remember: interval scales tell us not only about order, but also about the value between each element.
Learn more about measurement levels and how to apply them
4. Ratio scales
The ratio scale gives the exact value between units and also has an absolute zero, which allows a wide range of descriptive and inferential statistics to be applied.
Everything above about interval data applies to ratio scales, and ratio scales have a clear definition of zero.