Measurements and Scales

A. K. Sharma
IIT Kanpur

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 Measurement

The assignment of numbers (symbols) indicative of

quantity to properties, characteristics, or behaviour
of persons, objects, events or states.

K.N.Krishnaswamy and others, Management Research

Methodology, Pearson.

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 Scaling
Scaling may be considered an extension
of measurement. To illustrate, consider
a scale from 1 to 100 for locating
consumers according to the
characteristic: “attitude toward
department stores”.
1 as most unfavorable and 100 as most
favorable

Malhotra and Dash, Marketing

Research.
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Sociology employs two methodologies
• Qualitative
It deals with subjective meanings, interests,
perspectives, interactions and uses a
constructivist position – does not require
measurements
• Quantitative
Aims to discover facts by using objectivity and
value neutrality – requires scales and
measurements
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 Statistical applications need
measurements
Assigning numbers to:
•Individuals, groups and communities
•Conditions/situations/environment
•According to some rules

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Researchers aim to find out facts about
diverse social phenomena and discover
laws of human behaviour

To collect facts, it is necessary to have

measurements of variables comprising
the phenomena

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Imagine if scientific discoveries were possible
without the help of numbers and mathematics
and without measurements of time, mass,
distance, force and charge

Could Newton’s laws be given without

measurements of distance and time and rules of
mathematics?

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 Positivistic methodology needs
measurements to conduct surveys and
experiments

Measurements concern the real world

Mathematics is a formal science of

numbers that the positivists aim to
apply
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 Business research without numbers is
unthinkable
• Can business researchers work if they decide
not to use:
- Brands
- Preferences, attitudes, beliefs and percentions
- Composition of market
- Urban and rural residence
- Distribution of wealth - iInequality in income and assets
- Income and development
• Modelling and computer simulation is a
legitimate branch of management research
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 Certain things are easy to measure:
number of men and women, age, hours of
work, etc.

But how do you measure love, brand preference,

religiosity, coping, healing, attitudes and
knowledge?

Experts have shown a way, though their

measurements are nowhere near
perfection
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 Five properties of numbers
• Uniqueness, i.e., each number is unique
• Each number is larger or smaller than others
• Numbers are equally spaced in the number
series
• Arithmetical operations (+, _, *, /) apply
• The number series starts with a natural zero (a
rational number)

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 Let us begin with variables
• Characteristics which vary from one unit to
another (individual, group, region, context)
• Characteristics may be in the form of
 Scalar numbers
 Vectors (multiple measurements)
 Matrices (multiple measurements; multiple
dimensions)

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 Four types of measurements
1. Nominal (attributes/qualitative variables)

2. Ordinal (comparisons)

3. Interval (differences)

4. Ratio (with a real zero)

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Selection of scale depends on
the purpose of the study

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 Nominal variables
• Binary: ‘Yes’ or ‘No’
(possibly ‘Don’t know” also)

• Two or more categories

(Hindu, Muslim, Jains, Others)

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 Examples/Uses of nominal scale
• Religion, state, migration status (in-migrant, out-migrant,
native), caste, color blind (can't recognize green or red),
occupation
• Went for sex determination or did not go for sex
determination
• Ever enrolled in school or never enrolled
• Transformation: one to one (equality)
• Possible to do frequency analysis only
• Among central tendencies only mode can be computed
• Univariate and bi-variate (multivariate) tables
• Chi-square test
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 Ordinal or ranking variable
• Objects stand in some relationship –
monotonic increasing
• Orders and ranks
• Preferences (strongly agree to strongly
disagree)
• Ranking of regions on the basis of IMR,
literacy, etc.

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Instructions
Rank the various brands of toothpaste in order of preference. Begin by picking out
the one brand that you like most and assign it a number 1. Then find the second
most preferred brand and assign it a number 2. Continue this procedure until you
have ranked all the brands of toothpaste in order of preference. The least preferred
brand should be assigned a rank of 10. No two brands should receive the same rank
number.
The criterion of preference is entirely up to you. There is no right or wrong answer.
Just try to be consistent.

Brand Rank Order

1. Crest ––––––––
2. Colgate ––––––––
3. Aim ––––––––
4. Gleem ––––––––
5. Sensodyne ––––––––
6. Ultra Brite ––––––––
7. Close Up ––––––––
8. Pepsodent ––––––––
9. Plus White ––––––––
10. Stripe ––––––––
STORE RANK ORDER
1. Nordstrom _________
2. Macy’s _________
3. Kmart _________
4. Kohl’s _________
5. JCPenney _________
6. Neiman Marcus _________
7. Marshalls _________
8. Saks Fifth Avenue _________
9. Sears _________
10. Wal-Mart _________
 Examples/Uses of ordinal scale
• Level of education
• Socio-economic status
• Household amenities
• Occupation (in the scales of occupational
hierarchy)
• Urban classification as class of city (metropolitan,
Class I city, large size town, middle size town,
small town)
• Here one can calculate the median, percentiles
and rank-order correlation and use non-
parametric statistics

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 Interval scale

• First truly quantitative scale

• Values measured are not only rank-ordered
(ordinal) but the adjacent values are equi-
distant
• Meaningful differences between two numbers

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 Examples/Uses of Interval scale
• Age
• Intelligence Quotient
• Temperature in Fahrenheit/Centigrade
(F = 32 + 9/5 C)

• Years of experience in the industry

• Time
• We can calculate mean, variance, range,
correlations, and apply ANOVA and all
common parametric statistics
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 Why is temperature scale interval?
• “Freezing” occurs at 00 on the Celsius scale and “boiling” occurs at 1000. On
the Fahrenheit scale, “Freezing” occurs at 320 and “boiling” occurs at 2120.
• Notice that the ratios of the similar differences on one scale are equal to
ratios of the similar differences on the other scale, i.e., ratios of intervals
are independent of units of
• Measurements

Measure Value
Centigrade - 50 0 50 100
Fahrenheit -58 32 122 212

• Same thing applies to age and IQ

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 Ratio scale
• All properties of nominal, ordinal and interval scales
• No possibility of a negative value?
• This is a scale with a true zero (Is 00 temperature means
absence of any temperature?)
• Rarely found in social sciences
• Here we can aspire only for interval scale
• Can use all operations on them
• Guess the scale of the following:
Age, number of children, marital status, caste,
literacy, proximate literacy

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 Examples/Uses of ratio scale
• Weight
• Mass
• Income
• Pressure
• Number of children
• Ratios are independent
of the units of
measurements
• Coefficient of variation Source: https://www.google.com/search?
(V= 100*SD/M) can also site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1920&bih=948&
q=coefficient+of+variation&oq=coeffic&gs_l=img.
be computed 1.1.0l10.2688.4406.0.6871.9.9.0.0.0.0.236.909.0
j6j1.7.0....0...1.1.64.img..2.7.907.0.aLc8sF-
KAYY#tbm=isch&q=ratio+scale&imgrc=TOMh3znQ
Twoa5M:

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 Scaling: common types of scales
• Single item, e.g. years of schooling, or age (in
completed years)
• Ranking and rating, e.g., “Rank the five largest
cities of India in terms of cleanliness”; “Rate each
of the following cities in terms of cleanliness.
Assign 1 to most dirty city and 5 to cleanest city.”
• Likert scales
(ordinal relationship of values within a single
item)

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 Likert scale is the most used scale in
social sciences
• In which there are several items in the form of
statements
• The usual response categories are “strongly
agree,” “agree,” “don’t know/neutral,”
“disagree,” and “strongly agree”, etc.
• Sum of a number of Likert items can be used
to form a measurement (interval type)
• Such measures must pass the tests of
reliability and validity

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 Index of discriminating power (DP) may be
used for selecting more discriminating Likert
items over less discriminating ones.

Items with a high DP coefficient are ones

where the mean score of the top 25% of
respondents’ scores on the item is highly
different from the mean score of the bottom
25% respondents

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For computing DPs a set of judges
may also be given a set of Likert
items, all meant to measure the
same variable

The items with the highest DP value

are selected for inclusion in the
survey
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Items of an environment scale – strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree
(5)
(Explanations added in parenthesis)
1. We are approaching the limit of the number of people the earth
can support (within limited supply of natural resources such as
land, water, air etc.)
2. Humans have the right to modify the natural environment to suit
their needs
3. When humans interfere with nature it often leads to disastrous
consequences
4. Human ingenuity will insure that we do NOT make the earth
unliveable (They will always be able to make newer discoveries
to solve emergent problems of existence)
5. Human are severely abusing the environment
6. The earth has plenty of natural resources if we just learn how to
develop them
7. Plants and animals have as much right as humans to exist
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 Items of the Scale (cont.)
8. Balance of nature is strong enough to cope with the impacts of
modern industrial nations (such as England or America)
9. Despite our special abilities humans are still subject to the laws of
nature
10. The so-called ‘ecological crisis’ faced by humankind has been
greatly exaggerated
11. The earth is a spaceship with very limited rooms and resources
(such as water, land and other natural resources)
12. Humans were meant to rule over the rest of the nature
13. The balance of nature is very delicate and easily upset
14. Humans will eventually learn enough about how nature works to
be able to control it
15. If things continue with the present course, we will soon
experience a major ecological catastrophe
Source: Ph.D. thesis of Dr. Pradip Swarnakar, HSS Deptt, IIT
Kanpur, 2008.
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 Reverse coding
• There are some questions on which
agreement shows a high environmental
consciousness and some on which agreement
shows a lack of it
• They are randomly arranged
• Before adding the item scores their codes
must be reversed (5-1 or 1-5?)

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 Semantic differential scale
A multi-item scale where subjects indicate their opinions or
feelings toward a statement using different pairs of
adjectives, e.g. good and bad

Very Somewhat Neither Somewhat Very

much much
Good 5 4 3 2 1 Bad

Beautiful 5 4 3 2 1 Ugly

True 5 4 3 2 1 False

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 Guttman scale
• Multi item composite scale using a series of items arranged in
order of intensity
• Weighted combination of them for overall measurement
How will you rate your opinion on the following
statements
Do you mind a PLHA as living in your city Yes No
Yes No
Do you mind a PLHA as your co-worker

Do you mind a PLHA as your neighbour Yes No

Do you mind a PLHA as your relative Yes No

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 Before using any scale
• Check whether they suffer from social
desirability
• Check their reliability (reproducibility)
• Check their validity (truth content)
• Check the undecided category. Preference for
undecided category can be controlled better
by avoiding it
• Check sensitivity
• Check specificity
• Responsiveness to change
• Feasibility

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 CHECK
Sensitivity: Those who possess a particular
attribute show it

For example, if a high proportion of those who

suffer from obstetric morbidity report it, the self
reported morbidity has high sensitivity but
health disorder is (What about self reported
health disorders?)

Specificity: Those who lack a particular attribute

do not show it
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 Scaling is not fixed
• There is continuous improvement in measuring
different things in social sciences
• It is a process; new researches learn from the
older researches and improve scales/measures
• Sometimes the same thing, e.g. migration is
measured by asking different questions and no
question is considered to be perfect
• In practice, all statistical tools are used for
interval data
• When you take up a research, first look at the
existing measures, improvise them and test their
reliability and validity
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Thank you!

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