In Exercises 21–28, determine which of the four levels of meas...

Question

In Exercises 21–28, determine which of the four levels of measurement (nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio) best describes the given data.

College Students In order to better plan for the incoming freshman class, a college dean asks each newly admitted student to identify their likely major (physics, business, math, psychology, engineering, law, etc.).

Accepted Answer

All right, hello, everyone. So this question is asking us, which of the 4 levels of measurement best describes the given data. Hospital patients, to improve patient care, a hospital administrator asks each admitted patient to specify their primary medical condition, diabetes, asthma, hypertension, pneumonia, etc. Option A in the multiple choice says nominal, B says ordinal, C says interval, and D says ratio. All right, so first, let's go ahead and understand what the levels of measurement are defined as, because each option in here in the multiple choice represents a different level of measurement. Starting off, for example, with nominal. Now, nominal data refers to Categories. That have no meaningful order. So an example of this would be different colors, types of animals or blood types. Now, ordinal data on the other hand, does have a meaningful order, hence the name, right? But The categories themselves, while they do have a meaningful order, have no fixed interval. So an example of this would be, let's say education level or satisfaction ratings in a survey. So with this in mind, both nominal and ordinal represent categorical data, whereas intervals and ratios represent numeric values. The difference between them, however, is that an interval is a numerical value, but there's no true zero. Whereas a ratio does have a true zero. So now let's go back to the example given. And in this example, the data is based on the primary medical condition that each patient is reporting, whether it's diabetes, asthma, hypertension, pneumonia, or something else. So The key word here is category, right? The patients are being grouped into different categories depending on the primary medical condition that they state. So We're tied between nominal and ordinal, right, because we are dealing with categories. But the difference is in whether or not these categories are ranked or if they're placed in a specific order relative to the others. And in this case they're not, right? Because hypertension, for example, wouldn't be placed higher or lower than any of the other conditions listed. So, the data is consisting of categories without a meaningful order. Therefore, Option A, nominal is our correct answer. And there you have it. So with that being said, thank you so very much for watching and I hope you found this helpful.

Key Concepts

Levels of Measurement

Nominal Scale

Ordinal Scale

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