Discussion: Measures of Central Tendency

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Levels of Measurement

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Levels of Measurement

Levels of measurement consist of interval, ordinal, ratio, and nominal. Nominal is the lowest level where there is no representation of mathematical variables. For instance, when measuring the gender population in rehabilitation centers with more males than females, nominal variables would be more than the real number of individuals in rehabilitation centers. On the other hand, ordinal measurement is a level where there is a ranking of variables in an orderly way (Vaske, 2019). For instance, a researcher may use the Likert scale to survey people in a community through the agree-strongly disagree method at the end of a meeting. In this case, the survey is rank-ordered to show how effective the meeting was relative to survey results.

Additionally, an interval is a level of measurement where variables have meaningful values with the same space between the values. The space is vital in the data collected because zero has no basic value in this measurement. In this case, one can use interval measurements to track substance abusers between two diverse age groups. Hence, the data is essential in understanding what situations can cause people to abuse substances. Finally, the ratio is the measurement level where variables have meaningful value with the same space between the values but have no true value of zero. Hence, a ratio level is countable. In this case, ratio and interval measurements would be the best levels to gather information on the number of substance abusers in a given year by combining them to compare the information. When one wants to gather data in the criminal justice system, I think these levels would apply to any researcher on a study. However, not all measurement levels are compatible since wrong measurement levels can skew outcomes.

Reference

Vaske, J. J. (2019). Survey research and analysis. Sagamore-Venture. 1807 North Federal Drive, Urbana, IL 61801.