Question

1. In each of the following, determine which of the four levels/scales of measurement (nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio) is most appropriate.

1. Salaries of beginning insurance agents.
2. Survey responses of: “Strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree.”
3. Visa credit card numbers.
4. Nationalities of students in a survey.
5. Times required to lubricate a car at a garage
6. The daily ‘low temperature’ for the last month in your town.
7. Telephone area codes.
8. Consumer Reports hotel ratings of one, two, three or four stars. [8 marks]

2. Categorize the following as either discrete qualitative, discrete quantitative or continuous quantitative.

1. The listing of “reason given for quitting a job”.
2. Precise time it takes a bank teller to service a customer.
3. Number of damaged items in a shipment of 10,000 items.
4. The amount (to the nearest ounce) of antifreeze in a container.

Answer 1

1. Salaries of beginning insurance agents - ratio
2. Survey responses of: “Strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree.” - ordinal
3. Visa credit card numbers. - Nominal
4. Nationalities of students in a survey. - nominal
5. Times required to lubricate a car at a garage - ratio

With nominal level of measurement, no meaningful order is implied. This means we can re-order our list of variables without affecting how we look at the relationship among these variables. hence

Visa credit number and nationality is nominal

time is ratio since 0 time is meaningful.   , similarly for salary.