Types of Data / Responses you can Collect
All of the items you develop would need to have a response range.
Such a response range can be discrete, categorical, norminal, ordinal, interval, continuous, etc.
Say what?
Nominal / categorical data = e.g. birth date, residency, ethinicity
Ordinal / ranked data = responses that are ordered from low to high
Interval data = more precise data e.g. height, weight, temperature
Need more info, see link:
http://www.stats.gla.ac.uk/steps/glossary/presenting_data.html
http://changingminds.org/explanations/research/measurement/types_data.htm
Such a response range can be discrete, categorical, norminal, ordinal, interval, continuous, etc.
Say what?
Nominal / categorical data = e.g. birth date, residency, ethinicity
Ordinal / ranked data = responses that are ordered from low to high
Interval data = more precise data e.g. height, weight, temperature
Need more info, see link:
http://www.stats.gla.ac.uk/steps/glossary/presenting_data.html
http://changingminds.org/explanations/research/measurement/types_data.htm
Continuous Scale
An example of an ordinal variable is if depression is measured as below:
I feel sad…..
1. Never 2. Some days 3. Most days 4. Every day
Here, you have a response option for an item that is from 1 to 4.
Pulling together items such as above and creating scales, and later doing further analyses on these scales, we will likely find that that our values could be anything between 1 to 4 including 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, ......to 3.8, 3.9, 4.0. Meaning, we would have likely created values that are continuous.
I feel sad…..
1. Never 2. Some days 3. Most days 4. Every day
Here, you have a response option for an item that is from 1 to 4.
Pulling together items such as above and creating scales, and later doing further analyses on these scales, we will likely find that that our values could be anything between 1 to 4 including 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, ......to 3.8, 3.9, 4.0. Meaning, we would have likely created values that are continuous.
Discontinuous Items
A categorical (or discontinuous) response variable would look like the example below:
I often feel neglected by the following people:
My parents b. My teachers c. My friends d. My siblings
Here, the response does not flow from a measurement of low to high (or vice-versa). Each response is a category to itself.
We are most likely not going to pull items such as the one above to create a scale, as it would not be very meaningful.
I often feel neglected by the following people:
My parents b. My teachers c. My friends d. My siblings
Here, the response does not flow from a measurement of low to high (or vice-versa). Each response is a category to itself.
We are most likely not going to pull items such as the one above to create a scale, as it would not be very meaningful.