Question

Every 10 years, the federal government sponsors a national survey of health and health practices (nhanes). one question in the survey asks participants to rate their overall health using a 5-point rating scale. what is the scale of measurement used for this question? ratio ordinal interval nominal

Answer 1

The scale of measurement used here is an ordinal scale.

Ordinal scales ask participants to rate things like satisfaction, happiness, comfort. etc. The important thing to remember about this scale is that the order of the values matter the most. For example: we know that a 5 is better than a 1, but we are unsure of exactly how much better. This difference cannot be quantified or measured exactly. An easy way to remember this one is that ordinal sounds like "order" and that is what this measure is used for- putting things in order.

The most common form of ordinal measures is the Likert Scale. The question is an illustration of a Likert Scale.