Levels of measurement help us organize different types of variables, or groups of data, gathered for testing. Data can be qualitative or quantitative. Once you know if data it is numerical or descriptive, what’s next? Next, you want to figure out the type of data. To do so, you need to understand the levels involved: Ordinal, Nominal, Interval, and Ratio. These are depicted below. For more resources, be sure to check out the “Resource” page in the Academic Support Portal.

Choosing the level of measurement can help you to decide which calculations to use and the types of graphs appropriate for your data. The breakdown below shows you which match up with which!