Scales

Paper XII: Psychological Testing
Psychological Testing and Assessment

Scales
INTRODUCTION
• Level of measurement or scale of measure is a classification that describes the
nature of information within the numbers assigned to variables. Psychologist
Stanley Smith Stevens developed the best known classification with four levels
or scales of measurement: nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio.
• Stevens claimed that all measurement in science was conducted using four
different types of scales that he called "nominal" "ordinal" "interval" and "ratio"
unifying both "qualitative" (which are described by his "nominal" type) and
"quantitative" (all the rest of his scales).
• The concept of scale types later received the mathematical rigor that it lacked at
its inception with the work of mathematical psychologists Theodore Alper
(1985, 1987), Louis Narens (1981a, b), and R. Duncan Luce (1986, 1987, 2001).
As Luce (1997, p. 395) wrote;
1. Nominal Scale
• A nominal scale of measurement deals with variables that are non-
numeric or where the numbers have no value. The lowest
measurement level you can use, from a statistical point of view, is a
nominal scale.
• A nominal scale, as the name implies, is simply some placing of data
into categories, without any order or structure.
• A physical example of a nominal scale is the terms we use for colours.
The underlying spectrum is ordered but the names are nominal.
• In research activities a YES/NO scale is nominal. It has no order and
there is no distance between YES and NO.
2. Ordinal Scale:
• The ordinal type allows for rank order (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.) by which data can be
sorted, but still does not allow for relative degree of difference between them.
An ordinal scale of measurement looks at variables where the order matters but
the differences do not matter.
• When you think of 'ordinal,' think of the word 'order.' In the case of letter grades,
we don't really know how much better an A is than a D. We know that A is better
than B, which is better than C, and so on. But is A four times better than D? Is it
two times better? In this case, the order is important but not the differences.
• Examples include, on one hand, dichotomous data with dichotomous (or
dichotomized) values such as 'sick' vs. 'healthy' when measuring health, 'guilty'
vs. 'innocent' when making judgments in courts, 'wrong/false' vs. 'right/true'
when measuring truth value, and, on the other hand, non-dichotomous data
consisting of a spectrum of values, such as 'completely agree', 'mostly agree',
'mostly disagree', 'completely disagree' when measuring opinion.
3. Interval Scale:
• Interval scales are numeric scales in which we know not only the order, but also
the exact differences between the values.
• The classic example of an interval scale is Celsius temperature because the
difference between each value is the same.
• For example, the difference between 60 and 50 degrees is a measurable 10
degrees, as is the difference between 80 and 70 degrees.
• Time is another good example of an interval scale in which the increments are
known, consistent, and measurable.
4. Ratio Scale
• The ratio scale of measurement is the most informative scale. It is an interval
scale with the additional property that its zero position indicates the absence of
the quantity being measured. You can think of a ratio scale as the three earlier
scales rolled up in one. Like a nominal scale, it provides a name or category for
each object (the numbers serve as labels).
• Like an ordinal scale, the objects are ordered (in terms of the ordering of the
numbers). Like an interval scale, the same difference at two places on the scale
has the same meaning.
• And in addition, the same ratio at two places on the scale also carries the same
meaning.
4. Ratio Scale
• Ratio scales are the ultimate nirvana when it comes to measurement scales
because they tell us about the order, they tell us the exact value between units
and they also have an absolute zero–which allows for a wide range of both
descriptive and inferential statistics to be applied.
• Everything above about interval data applies to ratio scales i.e. ratio scales have
a clear definition of zero. Good examples of ratio variables include height and
weight.
• Ratio scales provide a wealth of possibilities when it comes to statistical
analysis. These variables can be meaningfully added, subtracted, multiplied,
divided (ratios).
• Central tendency can be measured by mode, median, or mean; measures of
dispersion, such as standard deviation and coefficient of variation can also be
calculated from ratio scales.
ADMISSIBLE STATISTICAL TESTS FOR MEASUREMENT
• Statistical Tests for Nominal Scale: Since the symbols or labels attached to any
category are arbitrary and can be interchanged without altering essential
information contained in the scale, the only kind of descriptive statistics that
can be used are those, which would not be affected or altered by such
interchange.
• They are crude mode, proportion and frequency.
• The nominal scale data, however, can be used for testing of hypothesis relating
to distribution of events among the classes.
• Chi-square test, Contingency Coefficient, and certain other tests based on
binomial expansion can be used for the purpose.
ADMISSIBLE STATISTICAL TESTS FOR MEASUREMENT
• Statistical Tests for Ordinal Scale: Median is the most appropriate measure of
central tendency of the scores that are in an ordinal scale. Obviously, quartile
deviation is the measure of dispersion for such data.
• There are a number of non-parametric tests to test a hypothesis with scores
in an ordinal scale - runs test, sign test, median test, Mann Whitney U- test,
etc.
• These tests are often referred to as ‘order statistics’ or ‘ranking statistics’.
Interrelations can be computed from rankings of two sets of observations on
the same group of individuals.
• Spearman’s Rank Difference, or Kendall Rank Correlation coefficients are
appropriate for such situations.
Statistical Tests for Ordinal Scale
• For applying tests to measurements on an ordinal scale, we make an assumption that the
observations are drawn from a distribution, which is essentially continuous. Such
assumptions are also made for all parametric tests.
• A continuous variate is one that is not restricted to having only isolated values. Given a
certain limit (interval between two classes), we can have any number of values inserted
in between.
• With an increase in the number of observations, more and more of these values are likely
to be represented. It will suffice, at this point, to remind the readers that very often the
crudeness of our measuring devices obscures the underlying continuity that may exist.
• The classification of respondents with respect to an attitude statement into categories
strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree essentially presumes the
presence of a continuum.
• If a variate is truly continuous and if the instrument for measuring the property in
question is sensitive enough, then the probability of obtaining a tied observation is
extremely small.
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Paper XII: Psychological Testing

Psychological Testing and Assessment

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