Core: Business Research
(UNIT 3)
BMS 4th Sem
Sugandha Jain
DATA COLLECTION
MEASUREMENT AND SCALING
Scaling
Measurement
Extension of measurement.
Assigning numbers or some
Involves creating a
other symbols to the
continuum on which
characteristics of certain
measurements on objects
objects
are located
Types of Measurement Scales
Nominal Ordinal
Interval Ratio
Nominal Scale
• Lowest level of measurement.
• Numbers are assigned for identification of the objects. Any object which is
assigned a higher number is in no way superior to the one which is assigned a
lower number.
• The objects are divided into mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive
categories.
• Nominal scale measurements are used for identifying food habits (vegetarian or
non-vegetarian), gender (male/female), caste, respondents, brands, stores, the
players of a hockey team and so on.
• The assigned numbers cannot be added, subtracted, multiplied or divided. The
only arithmetic operations that can be carried out are the count of each
category. Therefore, a frequency distribution table can be prepared and mode
can be calculated.
Examples of Nominal Scale
Which department do you
work in?
What is your religion?
(a) Marketing
(a) Hinduism
(b) HR
(b) Sikhism Are you married?
(c) Information Technology
(c) Christianity (a) Yes (b) No
(d) Operations
(d) Islam
(e) Finance and Accounting
(e) Any other, (please specify)
(f ) Any other, (please
specify)
Ordinal Scale
• One of the limitations of the nominal scale measurements is that we cannot say whether the
assigned number to an object is higher or lower than the one assigned to another option. The
ordinal scale measurement takes care of this limitation.
• It tells whether an object has more or less of characteristics than some other objects.
However, it cannot answer how much more or how much less.
• It tells us the relative positions of the objects and not the difference between the magnitudes
of the objects.
• Suppose A scores highest marks and is ranked 1; B scores second highest marks and is ranked
2; and C scores third highest marks and is ranked 3. We cannot say whether the difference in
the marks scored by A and B is the same as between B and C. The only statement which can be
made under ordinal scale is that A has scored higher than B and B has scored higher than C.
• Examples include quality ranking, rankings of the teams in a tournament, ranking of preference
for colours, soft drinks, socio-economic class and occupational status, etc.
• In the ordinal scale, the assigned ranks cannot be added, multiplied, subtracted or divided.
Interval Scale
• It takes care of the limitation of the ordinal scale measurement where the difference between
the score on the ordinal scale does not have any meaningful interpretation. In the interval
scale the difference of the score on the scale has meaningful interpretation.
• It is assumed that the respondent is able to answer the questions on a continuum scale.
• The interval scale data has an arbitrary origin (non-zero origin).
• The most common example of the interval scale data is temperature measured in Celsius or
Farenheit.
• In the interval scale, the difference in score has a meaningful interpretation while the ratio of
the score on this scale does not have a meaningful interpretation.
• The numbers on this scale can be added, subtracted, multiplied or divided. One can compute
arithmetic mean, standard deviation, correlation coefficient and conduct a t-test, Z-test,
regression analysis and factor analysis.
Examples of Interval Scale
Ratio Scale
• Highest level of measurement
• Takes care of the limitations of interval scale, where the ratio of the measurements on the
scale does not have a meaningful interpretation.
• In this case, there is a natural zero (origin), whereas in the interval scale we had an arbitrary
zero.
• Examples are weight, distance travelled, income and sales of a company, etc.
• Consider the following examples for ratio scale measurements:
How many chemist shops are there in your locality?
How many students are there in the MBA programme at IIFT?
How much distance do you need to travel from your residence to reach the railway station?
• All the mathematical operations can be carried out using the ratio scale data.
Nominal Ordinal Interval Ratio
Characteristics
Order 🗶 ✔ ✔ ✔
Differences 🗶 🗶 ✔ ✔
Origin 🗶 🗶 🗶 ✔
Mathematical
=&≠ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Operators
<&> 🗶 ✔ ✔ ✔
+&- 🗶 🗶 ✔ ✔
X&/ 🗶 🗶 🗶 ✔
