PSYC 510
VARIABLES, M , & SPSS P W - SEASURES RACTICE ORKSHEET CALE OF
MEASUREMENT
Practice 1 – Basic Concepts
Classify each operational variable below as nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio (or scale).
a. Degree of pupil dilation in a person’s eyes in a study of romantic couples (measured in millimeters)
b. Number of books a person owns.
c. A book’s sales rank on amazon.com
d. The language a person primarily speaks at home.
e. Nationality of the participants in a cross-cultural study of Canadian, Ghanaian, and French students.
f. A student’s letter grade in school.
g. Narcissism as operationally defined using the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI – Raskin & Terry, 1988). This
40 question survey counts the number of statements selected associated with narcissism and provides a single
score ranging from 0 – 40, with a higher score indicating greater levels of narcissism.
h. The question “If you were given the chance, would you reapply to your current job?” Options: Yes or No
i. The question “Do you have fun at work?” using a sliding scale akin to Likert. People are shown all numbers 1 –
10 like in Likert, but instead of having to select a solid value, the participant can “slide” a bar anywhere on that
range.
Practice 2 - Application
Now that you can identify the scale of measurement, let’s practice doing this from a scenario. For each scenario, identify
the independent and dependent variables, and the scale of measurement for each.
2-1.Does the level of seniority of a CEO affect a firm’s performance? CEO level of seniority was categorized as New (0-1
years at the firm); Moderate (2 – 7 years at the firm), and Advanced (8+ years at the firm). The firm’s performance
was defined as the simple count of the number of acquisitions in the last year.
2-2. This study examines whether there is a difference between CEO narcissism in male and female CEOs. Narcissism
was operationally defined as the CEO’s use of first-person singular pronouns in interviews (determined by counting
the number of first-person singular pronouns divided by the sum of those pronouns plus all first- person plural
pronouns for a percent ranging from 0 – 100%).
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Review of Material: Scale of measurement – nominal, ordinal, interval/ratio/scale (Module 2)
Information from: Video “Measurements” and Ch. 3 Jackson “Scales (Levels) of Measurement”
Additional practice: Jackson ch. 3 Critical thinking check 3.1 Q2; MC self-test Q1 – 4 (answers in e-book for self-check)
Note: this is an OPTIONAL worksheet to practice applying some of this module’s key concepts. Please make sure you
