Discussion: Levels of Measurement

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Levels of Measurement

Week 3 Discussion

The four levels of measurement are as follows: nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio.

Focusing on the lowest level first, nominal variables don’t have representation in mathematics.

For example, if I wanted to measure the gender population within the prison system. On a

nominal level, if there were more males than females in prison than females, that fact would be

pertinent more than the actual number of people.

An example of an ordinal measurements is used with variables that can be ranked

ordered. Take the survey that is done by students here at the end of a class. Using the Likert

scale, we are asked to use a strongly agree-strongly disagree method. Based on the results on the

survey, the student survey should be rank-ordered to find out how effect students found that

course, (statistics.about.com, n. d.).

The next level of measurement, interval, uses variables that have meaningful value with

an equal distance between the values. The distance between intervals is critical to the data

collected because in this measurement, zero has no intrinsic value. In criminal justice, you could

use interval measurements to track recidivism in between two different age groups of men. This

information is vital to the understanding what circumstances can lead to recidivism among

offenders.

The final level of measurement is ratio. Ratio has the same properties as interval

measurement, except it does have a true value of zero. A ratio variable is a measure that can be

counted. If I wanted to do get information on the number of kidnappings there were in 2015,

ratio measurement would be a great way to gather such information.

It seems to me that these levels on measurement can be used together to compare

information. If one wanted to get a grand scope of how information is gathered in the criminal

justice system, it stands to reason that these levels of measurement would be used by any one

researcher throughout the course of their studies. However, it is vital to understand that not all

levels of measure are compatible. Using the incorrect level of measurement could skew results in

a way that could be unusable.

References

Bachman, R., & Schutt, R. K. (2014). The practice of research in criminology and criminal

justice (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Chapter 13, "Quantitative Data

Analysis"

Statistics.about.com staffers, (n. d.). What are the levels of measurement? Retrieved from

http://statistics.about.com/od/HelpandTutorials/a/Levels-Of-Measurement.htm