preview

Statistics Assessment : Social Research Skills

Better Essays

Statistics Assessment
Social Research Skills 1

1. The following questions are about measurement

a) List the different levels a variable may take and describe the properties of the levels.

The levels of measurements that variables can take are: (1) scale or continuous; (2) ordinal; (3) nominal; (4) interval; (5) Dichotomous; (6) Ratio.

1) Scale or continuous: measurements with units that are on an independent scale example include height and age.
2) Ordinal: This is not measure on an independent scale with units like scale and continuous dater. Instead it comes in the form of ranks but a rank is only significant in relative to the other data in the set.
3) Nominal: nominal data also known as categorical data relate to information …show more content…

Statistical analyses are affected by Variables’ levels of measurement because the level of measurement can help you decide what statistical analysis is necessary with the values you have. The level of measurement is detrimental for this. Higher levels of measurement of a variable allows for more powerful statistical techniques can be applied to help analyse it. Furthermore, variable levels of measurement can also allow you to decide how you will interpret the data from the variable. An example of this is nominal data, where the frequency which each value of a variable takes place can be calculated. If you were to have a pole where people tell you their country of residence from the following options: England, Northern Island, Scotland, Wales etc., (these are all nominal variables) you can calculate the number of people who responded to each option this can allow you to create a percentage out of the total sample for each option. Though, some operation may not be able to be carried out as the data is nominal. This shows that variables ' levels of measurement can have major impact on the statistical analysis that you can

Get Access