Research Process Paper
Andra Lou Lewis
University of Phoenix
Research and Evaluation I
RES/341
Robert Katz
August 1, 2010

Research Process Paper The "levels of measurement", or scales of measure are expressions that typically refer to the theory of scale types. All measurement in science is conducted using four different types of scales Nominal, Ordinal, Interval, and Ratio Nominal scales when measuring use names or categorized responses and are the lowest scales of measurement. Gender, zip codes, area of country, favorite color, and religion are examples of variables measured on a nominal scale. The essential point about nominal scales is they do not have any impact on the data. In the Ordinal Scale type, the numbers assigned to objects or events represent the rank order (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.) of the entities assessed that represent a quality measurement and can tell whether a case has more or less. An ordinal scale defines a total preorder of objects; the scale values themselves have a total order. Ranked preferences only tell what one preference is over another, not how much more is preferred. Quantitative attributes are all measurable on interval scales, as any difference between the levels of an attribute can be multiplied by any real number to exceed or equal another difference. A highly familiar example of interval scale measurement is temperature with the Celsius scale. The thermometer represents equal volumes of mercury between each interval on the scale. The "zero point" on an interval scale is arbitrary; and negative values can be used. Other examples for everyday interval scales are SAT scores. Ratios scale measurements allow all the possible mathematical operations and data analysis and measures how many times greater one case is than another The central tendency of a variable measured at the interval level can be represented by its mode, its median, or its arithmetic mean. Statistics can be measured by differences or averaging. Examples of everyday ratio scales of measurement would be money. If you have $100, you have twice as much purchasing power as $50 vs. if you have no money, you have no purchasing power. Other examples include household size and annual income.

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