Ordinal Measure

Within the context of survey research, measurement refers to the process of assigning values to characteristics of individuals to indicate their position on an underlying construct, such as their level of satisfaction with the government or their political party affiliations. Ordinal measures are used to produce ordered rankings among values. For example, measurements or responses to the question, In general, would you say your health is: excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor? can be sorted and ordered from healthiest (“excellent”) to least healthy (“poor”). Ordinal measures convey information about the relationship between values—that one value is greater than another—but they do not indicate how much greater a value is. Although “excellent” is greater in value than “very good,” one cannot say with certainty that ...