Making a variable at different levels of measurement.

It is of paramount importance that students understand the different levels of measurement: nominal, ordinal, and interval/ratio. Create measures of variables at different levels. It is not possible to do this with all concepts, but some a good one (in addition to what Ive done in class) is income. Interval/Ratio: What is your gross annual income in dollars? ______________ Ordinal: What is your gross annual income in dollars? (0-9999) (10000-19999) Etc etc Or something like: Would you describe your income as being characteristic of: Poor comfortable wealthy Nominal: Lots of possibilities here AS LONG AS NOT ORDERED. Poor or Not poor

CRITICALLY IMPORTANT: the lower you go on the levels of measurement (i.e. from interval to nominal) the more detail you lose. Interval/Ratio are called the highest level of measurement because you get the most details with these variables and when we move on to statistics, these types of variables have the most opportunities for analysis.