Operationalization and Measurement

1
Operationalization and Measurement

• Session 7

2
Levels of Measurement

• Nominal categories with no inherent order.
  Categories must be exhaustive and exclusive
• Ordinal categories are discreet and ordered but
  values are not evenly spaced
• Interval categories are ordered and category
  determines how much more or less of a property
  one has. Can be mathematically manipulated
• Ratio Im supposed to teach you this but no one
  in the social sciences ever uses it. Its when
  the 0 means the absence of something

3
Examples of Nominal Ordinal and Interval

• Money
• Media
• Party
• Social Class
• We should strive for operationalizations that
  allow the highest level measurement whenever
  possible and appropriate. Interval measures have
  the most information.

4
Measurement

• Example
• Immigration and Nationality
• Age and Participation
• Losing Information
• When variables are measured at a lower level of
  measurement than possible, the data offer less
  information and are less precise