UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI

FACULTY OF EXTERNAL STUDIES

DEPARTMENT OF EXTRA-MURAL STUDIES

LDP 603: GROUP ASSIGNMENTS

TOPIC: MEASUREMENT SCALES

SUBMITTED BY: GROUP 11

No. Name Registration Number Signature

1 George Otieno Cottina
2 Walter Otieno Odum L50/66445/2010
3 Maurine Oyatta
4 Fred Wekesa L50/66998/2010
5 Salvatory Capis Odhiambo

PRESENTED TO:
DR PAUL ODUNDO

IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQIUREMENT FOR THE DEGREE OFMASTERS OF

ARTS IN PROJECT PLANINING AND MANAGEMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF
NAIROBI

December, 2010.

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Table of Contents
Page of content ...................................................................................................................................... 1
1.0 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 2
1.1Definition of Measurement Scale……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 2

2.0 Definition and Types of Measurements………………………………………………………………………………………..2

2.1Definition of Measurement Scale……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 2

2.2 Types Measurement Scale…………………………………………………………………………………………………….. ……….2

2.3 Definition of Measurement Scale……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 3

3.0 Levels of Measurement ..................................................................................................................... 3

3.1 Nominal scale ................................................................................................................................ 5
3.2 Ordinal Scale ................................................................................................................................. 6
3.3 Interval Scale ................................................................................................................................ 6
3.4 Ratio Scale .................................................................................................................................... 7
4.0 Measurement Errors ......................................................................................................................... 7
4.1 Source of Measurement error ........................................................................................................ 9
5.0 Validity ............................................................................................................................................ 10
5.1 Content Validity ........................................................................................................................... 11
5.2 Empirical Validity ........................................................................................................................ 12
5.3 Construct Validity ........................................................................................................................ 12
6.0 Reliability ....................................................................................................................................... 14
7.0 Methods of Calculating Nominal Scale ........................................................................................... 14
7.1 Rating and Ranking Scales ............................................................................................................... 16
7.2 Ranking Scales................................................................................................................................. 15
8.0 Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 16
Reference ............................................................................................................................................. 18

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1.0 INTRODUCTION

This paper outlines types of measurements, levels of measurement, and measurement errors.

Measurement is a relatively complex and demanding task especially when it involves qualitative

or abstract phenomena. Measurements involve both physical objects as well as abstract concepts.

2.0 DEFINITION AND TYPES OF MEASUREMENTS

2.1 Measurement Defined

Measurement can be defined as the process of assigning numbers to objects or observations, the

level of measurement being a function of the rules under which the numbers are assigned.

Technically, it is a process of mapping aspects of a domain onto other aspects of a range

according to some rule of correspondence (Kothari, 2004). It involves selection of observable

events, developing asset of mapping rules and applying the mapping rule to the events observed

to discover the extent, dimensions, quality or capacity of something in comparison to a standard.

2.2 Types of Measurements

There exist two main types of measurements and may be defined thus:

Qualitative Measurement: This involves the use of numbers and can further be classified into

vector and scalar measurement respectively depicting magnitude with direction and magnitude

only e.g. Force and Mass respectively.

Qualitative Measurement: Is non-numeric and takes the form of descriptive text. Examples

may include measurements of the degree of honesty, faithfulness, arrogance, etc.

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2.3 DEFINITION OF A MEASUREMENT SCALE

A scale may be defined as the possible range of measured values and constitutes the basis for

tools used in performing actual measurements. In measuring, we therefore devise some form of

scale in the range and then transform or map the properties of objects from the domain onto the

scale, for example we may measure the Degree of significance of an environmental as being high

or low on a scale of 1 to 10.

3.0 LEVELS OF MEASUREMENTS .

There are different levels of measurements. These levels differ as to how close they approach the

structure of number system we use. It is important to understand the level of measurement of

variable in research because the levels of measurement determine the type of statistical analysis

that can be conducted and therefore, the type of conclusions that can be drawn from the research.

Levels of measurement typically refer to the theory of scale types also referred to as

Measurement scales. A measurement scale can therefore be said to be a mapping rule devised

for the translation of observation of property indicants. Selecting and constructing a

measurement scale requires the considerations of several factors that influence the reliability,

validity, and practicability of the scale.

These may includes

I. Research objectives

II. Response types

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 III. Data properties

IV. Number of dimensions

V. Forced or unforced choices etc.

The appropriate choice of scale therefore depends on the underlying assumptions about how

numerical symbols correspond to the real-word situations. The following assumptions are usually

made:

i. Numbers are used to classify, group or sort responses.

ii. Numbers are ordered

iii. Differences between numbers are also ordered.

iv. The number series has unique origin indicated by zero (absolute zero point).

3.1 TYPES OF MEASUREMENT SCALES:

There exist four main types of measurement scales. These are:

i. Nominal scales

ii. Ordinal scales

iii. Interval Scales

iv. Ratio Scales

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3.1.1 Nominal Scale

Nominal scales are the lowest level of measurement. It is simply a system of assigning symbols

to events in order to label them. The numbers assigned to an object is only a symbol. For

instance, we can use number “1” and “2” to represent Male and Female respectively. As a rule,

we should categorize exhaustively ( for example with no case that includes all cases of that type,

) and mutually exclusive (that no case can be classified as belonging to more than one category).

The numbers are just convenient labels for the particular class of events and as such have no

quantitative value.

It is essentially labeling it can only establish whether two observations are alike or different for

example , sorting a desk of cards into piles red cards and black cards . The status of marital status

may be measured by two categories , married and unmarried but these must each be defined so

that all possible observations will fit into one category but not more than one : Legally Married ,

, common law marriage , religious marriage , , civil marriage , living together , never married ,

divorced , informally separated , legally separated .

In all nominal measurements, all observations in one category are alike property and they differ

from the objects in the other (or categories) on that property (example, code, sex) There is no

ordering of the categories ( No category is better or worse or more or less than another .

Nominal scale is the least powerful level of measurement. It does not indicate order or distance

relationship and has no arithmetic origin. It simply describes differences between things by

assigning them to categories. The scale wastes all the information that it may have about varying

degrees of the variable. The main statistics used for Nominal scale are the mode, measures of

qualitative variation and appropriate measures of association. Chi-square test is the most

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common test of statistical significance. For measures of correlation the contingency coefficient

can be worked out.

3.1.2 Ordinal Scale.

This is a level of measurement that shows the relative importance of variables in order of

Magnitude, Size and Preferences. Ordinal scale emphasizes order, which is expressed in degree

of quality. The typical relations are, “Higher”. “Greater”, “More desired” and so on. In most

cases ordinal scales indicate Rank Order for example in military to distinguish categories of

soldiers .This level of measurement uses symbols to classify observations into categories so that

they are not mutually exclusive and exhaustive ; in addition the categories have some explicit

relationship among them.

3.1.3 Interval Scale.

An interval scale possesses all the characteristics of an ordinal scale with one additional feature;

the distances between the points on this scale are equal. For example the distance between a

score of 70 and 80 is the same as the score between 80 and 90.

This level of measurement is used where particular data and information collected has

quantifiable magnitude such as population size, weight and distance, which are measured against

an established criteria or standard. Examples of such measurements include year calendar,

temperature, time and test score among others. In the interval level, a common and constant unit

of measurement has been established between the categories. For example, the commonly used

measures of temperature are interval level scale. Number may be assigned to the observation

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because relationship between the categories is assured to be the same as the relationship between

numbers in the number system. For example, 74+1= 75. The interval between categories are

equal, but they organize from some arbitrary origin, that is, there is no meaningful zero point on

interval scale

3.1.4 Ratio Scale.

This is the highest level of measurement that entails expressing the number of persons, and other

attributes such as proportions of the total population. It is a scale that possesses an actual, or zero

point. Variables such as weight, time, length and area have natural zero points and are measured

at the ratio level. In many cases internal ratio scale in public policy and administration, budgets

and the number of programmes participants are measured on ratio scales are treated all in terms

of statistical tests that one applied. Variables measured at high level can always be converted to a

lower but not vice versa. For example observations of actual age (ratio scale) can be converted to

categories of older and younger (ordinal scale), but age measured as simply older or younger

cannot be converted to measurement of actual age.

4.0 MEASUREMENT ERRORS.

Measurement procedures are used by scientists to assign numerals, numbers or scales to

properties. Once scores are assigned, they can attribute differences in scores obtained during

repeated observations to two sources. One source is the extent to which the variables exhibit real

differences in the properties being measured. the other source of difference in the scores is the

extent to which the measure itself or the setting in which the measurement takes place , influence

the scores. In this case, the measures reveal the illusory differences. Perfect measures reveal only

real differences between properties. However measurements are seldom perfect and often

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indicate not only real differences but also artifact differences variation produced by the

measuring procedure itself. Differences in measurements scores that are due to anything other

than real differences are termed Measurement Errors

There are several common sources of measurement errors. First, the scores obtained may be

related to an associated attribute, that is, an attribute that the researcher did not intend to

measure. For example, respondents may require a certain level of intelligence and social

awareness to interpret and answer a question measuring moral development. The responses of

individuals to this question will in effect reflect real differences in moral development but also

the effect of differences in intelligence and social awareness. The influence of associated

attribute is a measurement error. Second, measurement error may result in differences in

temporary conditions such as health or mood that may affect a person‟s response to a

questionnaire or a person‟s behavior. Third differences in the setting in which the measure is

used contribute to measurement errors. For example the age race and gender of interviewer

influences the answer of the survey respondents. Fourth, differences in administration of the

measuring instrument (poor lighting, noise, tired interviewers) can lead to measurement errors

.Fifth measurement errors can also result from different people interpreting the measuring

instrument in different ways.

The errors that arise from these sources are either systematic or random errors . Systematic errors

are produced whenever measuring instrument is used and they are constant between cases and

studies. They consistently introduce a measure of invalidity to the findings. Random error , by

contrast affect each usage of the measuring instrument in a different way . The seriousness of the

issue of validity and reliability are issues that prompted the introduction of techniques for

reducing measuring errors. (Achen, 1993)

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 Any good scientific study should be precise and unambiguous. However, some errors can occur

in the process of measurements. There are four main sources of measurement errors.

4.1 Sources of Measurement Error

1) The respondent can be a source of measurement error. This may occur if the respondent is

reluctant to express strong negative feelings or it is just possible that he may have little

knowledge but may not admit his ignorance on the subject of study. Other respondent related

errors may occur due to fatigue, boredom, anxiety etc. and may limit the ability of respondent to

respond accurately and fully.

2) Situation: situational factors may also come in the way of correct measurement. Any condition

that places a strain on interview can have serious effects on the interviewer-respondent rapport.

For example, if some one else is present during the interview, the respondent may feel shy to

give all the information he may want to give.

3) Measurer: The interview can be a source of error if they distort responses by rewording or re-

ordering the questions. The interviewer‟s behaviour, style, or looks may encourage or discourage

certain replies from the respondents. The sources may relate to incorrect coding, faulty

tabulation and or statistical calculations, or careless mechanical processing.

4) Instruments: Defective measuring instruments may cause measurement errors. For example

when a person uses complex words beyond the comprehension of the respondents, ambiguous

meanings, poor printing, inadequate space for replies, response choice omission and so on.

5) Other problems encountered include a misplaced belief in precision. It is not usually necessary

for example to measure annual income in dollars and cents. Another problem is measures that go

against social convections. It is often easier to ask people to check of categories than to supply

specific information for example with regard to age, income, education e.t.c. It is a trade off

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 between gathering higher level (interval or ratio ) data and having a higher questionnaire

completion rate ( less missing data )

6) When the operational definition does not correspond to the conceptual definition it may be easier

to measure the number of students suspended from school than measure the concept of school

violence.

7) The last problem is when the researcher becomes addicted to certain statistics and gathers only

data measured at level appropriate for those statistical formulas.

Table 1: Summary of Levels of Measurements, properties and applicable statistical

operations

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4.0 VALIDITY

Validity is concern with the question “I am I measuring what I intent to measure ?‟ The problem

of validity arises because measurement in the social sciences, is, with very few exceptions,

indirect. Under such circumstances, researchers are never completely certain that they are

measuring the variable for which they designed their measurement procedure. For example does

the voter turn out truly measure political development?. If a respondent agrees with the statement

“this world is run by few people in power , and there is not much the little guy can do about it “ .

Is his or her response a genuine indicator of the presence of the variable „alienation‟? To answer

such questions the researcher must provide supportive evidence that a measuring instrument does

infact measure what it appears to measure.

We can distinguish three basic kinds of validity each of which is concerned with a different

aspect of measurement situation: content validity, empirical validity and construct validity.

5.1 Content Validity

There are two common varieties of content validity, face validity and sampling validity. Face

validity rests wit the investigator‟s subjective evaluation of the validity of measuring instrument.

In practice face validity does not relate to question of whether an instrument measures what the

researcher wishes to measure rather it is concerns the extent to which the researcher believes that

the instrument is appropriate .The main problem with the face validity is that there are no

precise, replicable procedure for evaluating the measuring instrument . As it is extremely

difficult to precisely repeat evaluation procedure, the researcher has to entirely rely on subjective

judgment.

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The primary concern of Sampling Validity is whether a given population (i.e. the total set of

cases in the real world) is adequately sampled by the measuring instruments in question. I other

words do, the statements, questions or indicators – the content of the instrument –adequately

represent the property being measured. The underlying assumption of sampling validity is that

every variable has a content population consisting of a large number of items (which can be

expressed as statement questions or indicators) and that highly valid instruments constitute a

representative sample of these items. In practice problems arise with the definition of a content

population, for this a theoretical and not empirical issue. These problems impair the effectiveness

of sampling validity as a test of an instrument‟s overall validity. However sampling validity

serves an important function it necessitates familiarity with all items of the content population .It

follows that sampling validity is especially useful in exploratory research where investigators

attempts to construct instruments and employ them for the first time . After their initial use of the

instrument, they can be comparing its validity with other tests.

5.2 Empirical Validity

Empirical Validity is concerned with the relationship between measuring instrument and

measuring outcome. Scientists assume that if a measuring instrument is valid, there should be a

strong relationship the result produced by applying the instrument and the real relationship

existing among the variables measured .

5.3 Construct Validity

Researcher establish construct by relating a measuring instrument to a general theoratical

framework in order to determine whether the instrument is tied to the concepts and teoraticqal

assumption they are employing .Lee J. Cronbach an early proponent of construct validity ,

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observed that “ whenever a tester asks what a score means pychologically or what causes a

person to get a certain test score means pychologically or what causes a person to get a certain

test score, he is asking what concept may be properly be used to interpret the test performance .

Theoratical expectations about the variable being measured lead the invesigator to postulate

various kinds and degrees of relationships between the particular variable and other specified

variables to demostrate the construct validity of measurement instrument , an ivestigataor has to

show that these relationships do infact hold . If the predictaions fails the explanation lies in

atleast one of the three possibilities (1) the instrument does not measure properly (2) the

theoratical frmawork that generated the predictions is flawed (3) the research design failed to test

the prediction properly

Campell and Fiske suggested another method of construct validation involving correlation

matrices . This is convergent – discriminant conception of validity , or the multitrait –multi

method matrix techniques . This method is derived from the idea that different methods of

measuring te same property should yield similar results, whereas difffernt properties should yield

different measurement regardless of the measuring instrument . operationally this means that

correlation coeffient among scores for a given property measured by diffferent instrument should

be higher than correlation coefficiency among scores for different properties measured by similar

instruments. In order to obtain evidence of the construct validity of an instrument , a reseracher

must make use of both convergent principle –two measures of te same property should correlate

highly with each other even though they represent different methods – and a discriminant

principle – two measures of difffernt properties should not correlate highly with each other even

though similar instrument is used

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In view of the distintinctions among the three types of validity it is recommended that a

researchers begin to construct a measurement instrument , they first evaluate theories that could

serve as foundation for the instrument ( construction validity ) : next , they define a content

population of items from which a representative sample is to be drawn (content validity ) ;finally

, they assess the predictive (empirical) validity of the instrument by correlating it with an exernal

criterion.

6.0 RELIABILITY

Reliability is of concern to social scientist because the measuring instruments they employ are

rarely completely valid .In many cases , evidence of validity is alsmost entirely lacking , instead

the researcher has to evaluate the measuring instrument with respect to other characteristics and

assume its valaidity . A method frequently used by social scientists for evalautig and instrument

is its degree of reliability .

Realiablity refers to the extent to which measuring instruments contain various errors that is

errors that appear inconsistently from observation to observation during one measurement

attempt or that vary eac time a given unit is measured by the same instrument . For example

when you measure the length of a desk at two points in time with the same instrument –say a

ruler – and get slightly different results the instrument contains varaible error. Because

measuring in the social sciences is primarily indirect the numbe rof errors tends to be greater

than when physical variables are measured . Factors such as respondant‟s momentarily

distraction when completing a qustionnnaire , ambiquous instructions and technical difficulties (

like a pencil breaking while the respondant is filling in a questinnaire ) may cause the

introduction of variable measurement errors.Each measurement then , consists of two

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components ; a true component and error component . Realiabilty can therefore be defined as as

the ratio of true score varaiance to the total varaiance in the scores as measured ( the varaiance is

a measure of the spread of observations or scores it is a description of te extent to which the

observations differ from each other that is .

Reliability measure varies on a scale of 0 to 1 having the former value when the measurement

involves nothing but error at all in the measurement .

7.0 METHODS FOR CALCULATING NORMAL SCORES

1. vander Waerden's method (Conover, 1999):

- where s is the normal score for an observation, r is the rank for that observation, n is the sample

size and (p) is the pth quantile from the standard normal distribution.

2. Blom's method (Altman, 1991):

- where s is the normal score for an observation, r is the rank for that observation, n is the sample

size and (p) is the pth quantile from the standard normal distribution.

3. Expected normal order scores (David, 1981; Royston, 1982; Harter, 1961)

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where s is the normal score for an observation, r is the rank for that observation, n is the sample

size, (p) is the standard normal density for p and (p) is the pth quantile from the standard normal

distribution. The solution is found by numerical integration. Calculation of expected normal

order scores is not practical for very large samples, n of 2500 is the maximum permitted in

StatsDirect.

7.1 Rating and ranking scales.

Requires the respondent to estimate the magnitude of a quality that an object possesses. Scoring

an object without making a direct comparison to another object.

Dichotomous

Likert scale

Semantic differential scale

Graphic scale

Staple Scale

7.2 Ranking scales

Requires that the respondents rank order a small number of activities, events or objects on the

basis of overall preference or some characteristic of the stimulus.

Paired comparison

Forced choice

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 Comparative scale

8.0 Summary / Conclusion

1. Measurement is the assignment of numerals to variables, properties or according to rules

.The most significant concept in this definition is rules. The function of a rule is to tie the

measurement procedure to reality, that is, to establish isomorphism between certain

numerical structure and the structure of the variable being measured. If they can establish

isomorphism researchers can perform quantitative analyses with the numerals that stand for

the properties

2. Isomorphism between numerical system and empirical properties enables the researcher to

distinguish between four levels of measurement: nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio. In

general the level of measurement determine which qualitative analyses can be performed on

a given setoff numbers

3. Measurement procedures are highly sensitive to data transformation and measurement error.

Properties that can be measured at a higher level of precision can also be measured at a lower

level, but not vice versa. That is some data can be transformed from ratio level to the nominal

level, but not all data can be transformed from nominal to ratio.

a. Measurement errors refers to the accuracy and consequent consistency of the measuring

instrument itself .The source of the error may lie in the misunderstanding of what is

actually being measured ( e.g intelligence rather than attitudes) or in the measure‟s

sensitivity to the measurement setting ( e.g a respondent‟s ability to concentrate in a

noisy testing room) . In any case the error reflects problems of measurement and not real

differences in the variable being measured.

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 b. The concept of validity and reliability are inseparable from measurement. They underlie

the sources of measurement error .Validity is concerned with the question whether

researchers are measuring what they think they are measuring .traditionally three types of

validity have been distinguished each of which relates to different aspect of measurement

situation : Content validity , empirical validity and construct validity . To validate a

certain measuring instrument, the researcher must look for information geared to each of

three types.

c. Reliability indicates the extent to which measure contains variable errors operationally it

is assumed that any measure consists of true component and a error component, the

proportion of the amount of variation in the true component to the total variation

indicates the measure reliability. Researchers estimate reliability by one or more of the

following methods: test re-test, parallel forms and split half . The notion of

generalizability implies that the main concern of reliability is with the extent to which a

set of measurements is similar to other sets of measurements that might have been drawn

from a given universe of potential measurements .

Reference:
Achen , Christopher H, “ Towards Theories of data : The state of political Methodology “.

In political science: The state of Discipline, No.II Rev.ed. Ada Finifier. Washington,DC : American
Political Science Association, 1993.

Allen Mary J. Introduction to measurement Theory. Pacific Grove , Calif : Brooks/Cole 1979

Blalock , Hubert M..Jr. Conceptualization and measurement in the social sciences

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 Newbury park ,Calif ; Sage, 1982.

Carley , Michael , Social measurement and social indicators . Boston : Allen & Unw 1981

www.en.wakipedia.or/wiki/levels of measurement scales.

www.simon.cs.vt.ed/measurement scale

www.fao.org/docrep/w324ie,

Zeller , Richard A, and Edward G. Carmines . Measurement in social science. New York:

Cambridge University Press .1980

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