Question

In Exercises 21-28,determine which of the four levels of measurement (nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio) is most appropriate.

College RankingsU.S. News & World Report periodically provides its rankings of national universities, and in a recent year the ranks for Princeton, Harvard, and Yale were 1, 2, and 3, respectively.

Short answer

The rankings of national universities can be categorised under the ordinal level of measurement.

Step-by-step solution

Given information

The ranks of three national universities are reported.

Classification of data according to the level of measurement

There are four measurement levels, namely:

Nominal: All data that consists of qualitative categories are labeled using a nominal scale. For example, coding N for New York city, C for Chicago, L for Los Angeles, and D for Denver.

Ordinal: The order of the values under study can be known with the ordinal scale of measurement. However, the differences between the observations are not considered to be meaningful. For example, coding 1 for moderate performance, 2 for good performance, and 3 for excellent performance in a particular sport.

Interval: With interval values, both the order of the values and the difference between them are practically known. For example, the heat amount of a system is measured in joules.

Ratio: With the ratio scale, the ratios of the numerical values can be computed, and it is extensively used in statistical analysis. Unlike the interval scale, the absolute zero value is defined. For example, age is measured in years, sales of a product are measured in dollars, etc.

Identification of the appropriate scale

As the rankings computed for a set of universities is periodic, but the difference between the ranks is not exactly known, so the ordinal level of measurement is the most appropriate.