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.

Criminology In a criminology study, the lengths of prison sentences are obtained for randomly selected subjects convicted of auto theft.

Accepted Answer

All right, hello, everyone. So, this question is asking us, which of the 4 levels of measurement best describes the given data. Work experience. In a corporate research study, the number of years employees have worked at a company is recorded for a randomly selected group of workers. Option A says nominal, B says ordinal, C says interval, and D says ratio. All right, so first and foremost, each of the different answer choices listed here represent a different level of measurement. So let's take a moment to understand what they mean. Now, options A and B, that's nominal and ordinal, both represent categorical data, but the difference is whether or not those categories have a meaningful order relative to each other. So, nominal data does have categories, but no meaningful ranking or order between the categories themselves. Examples would be, let's say colors or. Types of cars or the different departments in this workplace setting. Ordinal data on the other hand, like the name implies, does have a set order or ranking in between categories. An example of this would be, for example, a rating of a restaurant or education level. Now, on the other hand, options C and D, that's interval and ratio, deal with numerical values. And so the difference between them is whether or not those numerical values have a true zero. So in an interval, the numerical values have meaningful differences between each other, but there's no true zero. An example of this would be years in the Gregorian calendar. Horatio on the other hand. does deal with numerical values, and there are meaningful differences between those numbers, but this time there is a true zero. An example would be age or salary. So going back now to the example that's given. Researchers are asking employees how many years of experience they have working. So in this case, we are dealing with numerical values. Because in this case, each employee is going to state how many years they've been working. Now, in this particular context, there is or can be a true 0, because in this case, an employee responding 0 years means that they have no work experience prior to this point. So therefore, right? Not only are we dealing with numerical values with a meaningful zero, we also have. Or rather, we're also able to appreciate the differences between these numerical values. For example, the higher the number, the more experience that person has. So therefore, D is going to be correct in this case, because this would represent a ratio. And so with that being said, thank you so very much for watching, and I hope you found this helpful.

In Exercises 21–28, determine which of the four levels of measurement (nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio) best describes the given data.
Criminology In a criminology study, the lengths of prison sentences are obtained for randomly selected subjects convicted of auto theft.

Key Concepts

Levels of Measurement

Nominal and Ordinal Data

Interval and Ratio Data

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