Levels of measurement

It is often useful to categorize variables in terms of what is called their level of

measurement. There are essentially three levels of measurement to be concerned
with:

Nominal level
Ordinal level
Interval level

Nominal level variables have no order to them. The word nominal comes from the
same root as the word name. Names are in fact a nominal-level variable. Other
common examples are gender and race. Social Security numbers also constitute a
nominal level variable. Why? Although your Social Security number is a course a
number, it is not a number that has any meaning other than to identify people. We
cannot order Social Security numbers in any meaningful way. Some people have
Social Security numbers that start with a higher number than others but there is no
meaningful difference signified by this. So the Social Security number is a nominal
level variable. Any time that you arbitrarily assign a person or another entity an
identification number, the resulting variable will be nominal because the numbers
d4o not signify anything important or meaningful.
On the other hand, interval level variables are ordered. Interval-level variables
have categories that sit on the number line. What are some examples of interval
level variables? If I asked the class how many minutes it took each of you to
commute to campus, your responses would be an interval level variable. Any
variable measured in terms of precise amounts of time is an interval level variable.
Another example of an interval-level variable is income, provided that it is measured
in terms of dollar amounts. Anything that is ordered and precise is an interval level
variable.
Some variables have categories that are ordered, but only in an imprecise way.
These variables are ordinal level variables. Ordinal level variables do in fact have
order as the name implies however the categories of ordinal-level variables are not
spaced equally apart.
Let me give you an example. If you have had surgery or another painful medical
procedure of some kind, you may have been administered some anesthesia. In
order to determine how much of the anesthetic to administer to you, the doctor or
nurse may have asked you to rate your level of pain on a scale of 1 to 10. A 1 to 10
pain scale is an example of an ordinal level variable. Why? A pain scale is certainly
ordered in the sense that you are indicating with it whether you are experiencing

more or less pain. However a pain scale is ordinal rather than interval level because
pain is being measured in imprecise way. It is simply unknown whether for example
the difference between one and two on the pain scale is the same or different than
the difference between two and three. Because the pain scale is ordered
imprecisely, the categories are not spaced equally apart from each other. For this
reason, the pain scale is an example of an ordinal-level variable.
Students sometimes get confused by the difference between ordinal and interval
variables. Here is another way to think about it. Consider cooking. There are some
people who are natural in the kitchen and can cook up a very good dish without
having to consult a recipe. These natural cooks will often throw together a bunch of
ingredients in what appears to be a rather imprecise way. A natural cook may not
have to measure ingredients very precisely because he or she has a good feel for
how much of each ingredient is required to make the dish taste good. On the other
hand there are other people who struggle in the kitchen without the aid of a very
specific recipe. In order for these people to make a dish that doesn't taste terrible,
they need to follow directions on the recipe very closely and measure everything out
very closely. The difference between the natural cook who throws things together
and the novice cook who must rely on very precise measuring and recipes is an
example of the difference between ordinal level and interval level measurement.
In a nutshell:

No order = nominal.
Order but imprecise & not summable = ordinal
Ordered precisely and summable = interval.

Examples of nominal-level variables:

gender (male / female)

race (white/black/other)
social security number

Examples of ordinal-level variables:

How happy are you? (very happy, somewhat happy, not so happy)
What is the highest degree of education you have earned? (less than high
school/high school degree/associate's degree/bachelor's degree/master's or
professional degree, etc.)
income measured in categories (0-$5,000; $5001-$15,000; $15,001$25,000; $25,001-$35,000; $35,001-$45,000; $45,001-$60,000; $60,001

$70,000; $70,001-$80,000; $80,001-$90,000; $90,001-$100,000; $100,001 + )

Examples of interval-level variables:

income measured in exact dollar amounts

number of years of education (0 through 20)
burglary rate per 100,000 people in a state

When given a variable, you should be able to identify its level of measurement. When
figuring out level of measurement, theres only one or two questions you need to ask
yourself:
1. Are the categories of the variable ordered or not?
2. If the categories are ordered, are the categories precisely spaced out like

rungs on a ladder or not? Can do arithmetic with the categories or not?

See the levels of measurement decision tree.