How to interpret ordinal data

23 February 2014 Achilleas 53 Comments

The following (slightly modified) question was posted as a
comment here, but I felt that the answer was too lengthy for the
comments section.
Our questionnaire is composed of items with a 5 point scale,
ranging from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree. For
example, we are trying to find out if the respondents agree with
[a topic]. The number of respondents who strongly disagree
are 2, those who disagree are 9, those who are undecided are
24, those who agree are 18 and those who strongly agree are
7. How do I interpret this data?
For such data, I suggest that you calculate the median and
Inter-Quartile Range (IQR) of each item. The median (: the
number found exactly in the middle of the distribution) is a
measure of central tendency: very roughly speaking, it shows
what the average respondent might think, or the likeliest
response. The IQR is a measure of dispersion: it shows whether
the responses are clustered together or scattered across the range
of possible responses.
You can find some instructions on how to do calculate these
metrics with SPSS in this page (the procedure is the same for
both). If you only have access to Excel, here are links to a
couple of videos demonstrating how to calculate the median and
the IQR. For small datasets, such as yours, it is easy to calculate
the median and IQR manually. In the next two sections, I shall
show you how, using your example data.
Calculating the median
First, you arrange the numbers in an order from largest to
smallest, like this:

1,1,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,
3,3, 3,3,3,3,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,5,5,5,5,5,5,5
To compute the median, you then delete one number from each
end of the line, and repeat until you are left with just one
number (or two that are the same). This middle number is your
median. If you are left with two different numbers in the end,
the median is half-way between them. Using the data you
provided, the median is 3, and I have marked it with red to make
it stand out.
Calculating the IQR
The IQR is slightly more complicated, but not too hard. Your
starting point will be the same arrangement of responses that we
used above. When you divide this line into four equal parts, the
cut-off points are called quartiles. I have used red to indicate
quartiles in your dataset.
[1,1,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,3,3,3, 3]
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3, 3][3,3,3,3,3,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4, 4]
[4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,5,5,5,5,5,5, 5]
The IQR is the difference between the first and third quartile. In
your example, this is: Q3 Q1 = 4 3 = 1.
A relatively small IQR, as was the case above, is an indication
of consensus. By contrast, larger IQRs might suggest that
opinion is polarised, i.e., that your respondents tend to hold
strong opinions either for or against this topic.
Reporting the data
When your findings suggest consensus, your write-up should
focus on describing the median (i.e., what most respondents
seem to believe). One way to describe this is by writing
something like: most respondents indicated agreement with the
idea that (Mdn=4, IQR=0).

By contrast, when opinion is polarised, your write-up should

emphasise the dissonance of opinion: the median is perhaps not
so important. To help you understand this, consider a
hypothetical case where half of your respondents hate a new
textbook, and half love it. If you were to simply report that the
respondents are, on average, undecided, that would be a
statistical distortion of the data. Heres a possible way to report
the data more accurately: Opinion seems to be divided with
regard to . Many respondents (N=28, 47%) expressed strong
disagreement or disagreement, but a roughly equal number
(N=26, 43%) indicated that they agreed or strongly agreed
(Mdn=3, IQR=3).
A final caveat
One last thing: I would caution you against placing too much
faith on findings that were generated from a single Likert-type
item. If at all possible, Id try to cluster similar items together
and compare / merge their results. If the findings are broadly
consistent, that gives us confidence in them. If they are not, it
might mean that one of the items did not function properly (e.g.,
respondents may have been confused by the wording), and you
may have to discard it from the dataset.