what variable will be used to measure grade obtained in a course?

by Dr. Hellen Stracke 7 min read

Grades may be obtained by comparing a student's performance with specified absolute standards rather than with such relative standards as the work of other students.

Full Answer

What are the different levels of measure for variables?

 · Examples. Discrete variables (aka integer variables) Counts of individual items or values. Number of students in a class. Number of different tree species in a forest. Continuous variables (aka ratio variables) Measurements of continuous or non-finite values. Distance.

What are the different levels of measurement in research?

Measurement is the process of assigning labels to categories of variables. Categories of variables carry different properties, which are identified below. If one can only identify categories, then that variable is referred to as a nominal variable. If the categories of a variable can be ranked, such as from highest to lowest or from most to ...

What is the third variable in a study called?

Some examples of ratio variables are length measures in the english or metric systems, time measures in seconds, minutes, hours, etc., blood pressure measured in millmeters of mercury, age, and common measures of mass, weight, and volume ( see Figure 1.1 ). They are called ratio variables because ratios are meaningful with this type of variable.

What is a variable in math?

 · Let’s imagine you want to gather data relating to people’s income. There are various levels of measurement you could use for this variable. You could ask people to provide an exact figure, or you could ask them to select their answer from a variety of ranges—for example: (a) 10-19k, (b) 20-29k, (c) 30-39k, and so on.

What type of variable is course grade?

OrdinalOrdinal, when there is a natural order among the categories, such as, ranking scales or letter grades.

What type of measurement is grade?

ordinal level dataHere are some examples of ordinal level data: Order of finish in a race or a contest. Letter grades: A, B, C, D, or F.

Which variable is used to measure the results?

The dependent variable is the variable that is being measured or tested in an experiment.

What type of variable is student achievement?

dependent variableIn this example, intelligence is called the independent variable and academic achievement is the dependent variable.

Are grades nominal or ordinal?

Nominal (e.g., gender, ethnic background, religious or political affiliation) Ordinal (e.g., extent of agreement, school letter grades)

What are nominal and ordinal variables?

There are two types of categorical variable, nominal and ordinal. A nominal variable has no intrinsic ordering to its categories. For example, gender is a categorical variable having two categories (male and female) with no intrinsic ordering to the categories. An ordinal variable has a clear ordering.

What is quantitative variable?

Quantitative variables are any variables where the data represent amounts (e.g. height, weight, or age). Categorical variables are any variables where the data represent groups. This includes rankings (e.g. finishing places in a race), classifications (e.g. brands of cereal), and binary outcomes (e.g. coin flips).

What is a variable in educational research?

A variable is the characteristic or attribute of an individual, group, educational system, or the environment that is of interest in a research study. Variables can be straightforward and easy to measure, such as gender, age, or course of study.

What are the types of measurement in education?

Generally, there are three types of measurement: (i) Direct; (ii) Indirect; and Relative.

Is achievement score a discrete variable?

As 1.001 , 1.000002 , ... Discrete variables : A discrete variable is a variable that can only take on a certain number of values....Continuous variablesDiscrete variables4. Scores on an achievement test4.1 , 4.2 , 4.3 , ....4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , ...6 more rows•Feb 25, 2015

Is education a dependent or independent variable?

This study focuses on correlates of sending children to school.

How do you measure student academic performance?

Method of measurement Student performance is measured using grade point average (GPA), high school graduation rate, annual standardized tests and college entrance exams. A student's GPA is typically measured on a scale of zero to four with higher GPAs representing higher grades in the classroom.

What are independent and dependent variables?

You can think of independent and dependent variables in terms of cause and effect: an independent variable is the variable you think is the ca...

What is a confounding variable?

A confounding variable , also called a confounder or confounding factor, is a third variable in a study examining a potential cause-and-effect r...

What is the difference between quantitative and categorical variables?

Quantitative variables are any variables where the data represent amounts (e.g. height, weight, or age). Categorical variables are any variables...

What is the difference between discrete and continuous variables?

Discrete and continuous variables are two types of quantitative variables : Discrete variables represent counts (e.g. the number of objects in a...

What is a variable?

Variables. A variable is simply anything that varies, anything that assumes different values or categories. For example, sex varies because there is more than one category or classification: female and male. Race is a variable because there is more than one category: Asian, Black, Hispanic, etc.

What is qualitative variable?

A qualitative/categorical variable is one that has categories that are not ranked--i.e., a nominal variable. All other variables have categories that can be ranked, therefore the categories differ by degree. These variables are quantitative or continuous, and are represented by the ordinal, interval, and ratio scales.

Is race a variable?

Race is a variable because there is more than one category: Asian, Black, Hispanic, etc. Age is a variable because there is more than one category: 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, etc. Conversely, a constant is anything that does not vary or take different values or categories. For example, everyone participating in this course is a student, ...

What is a constant in math?

Conversely, a constant is anything that does not vary or take different values or categories. For example, everyone participating in this course is a student, so that is not a variable since it does not vary since it has only one category. As another example, consider a group of white females. With this group, neither race nor sex varies, so race ...

What is measurement in math?

Measurement is the process of assigning labels to categories of variables. Categories of variables carry different properties, which are identified below. If one can only identify categories, then that variable is referred to as a nominal variable.

What does equal interval mean?

Equal interval means that the difference between two successive categories are the same. For example, temperature measured with Fahrenheit has equal intervals; that is, the difference between temperatures of 30 and 31 degrees is 1 degree, and the difference between 100 and 101 degrees is 1 degree. No matter where on the scale ...

Is time a ratio scale?

While time in the abstract (no ending or beginning) sense is interval, in practice time is a ratio scale of measurement since time is usually measured in lengths or spans which means time does have a starting or ending point.

How to look at variables?

You can see that one way to look at variables is to divide them into four different categories ( nominal , ordinal , interval and ratio ). These refer to the levels of measure associated with the variables. In everyday usage the convention is to then use the level of measure to refer to the kind of variable.

What are the two types of qualitative variables?

You can see that the four levels of measure (nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio) fall into these two larger supercategories. So, interval and ratio variables are two kinds of quantitative variables and nominal and ordinal variables are two kinds of qualitative variables.

Is one category better than another?

One isn't necessarily better than another category . But, it is true you typically have more information with some than with others, and you're more used to working with some than with others. With interval and ratio variables for example, you can do averages and things like that. You know there are numbers.

What are the different types of measurement scales?

You can see there are four different types of measurement scales (nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio). Each of the four scales, respectively, typically provides more information about the variables being measured than those preceding it. That is the reason why the terms "nominal", "ordinal", "interval", and "ratio" are often referred ...

Why are Celsius and Fahrenheit temperature variables called interval variables?

What about interval variables ( see Figure 1.1 )? How are they different? Why are Celsius and Fahrenheit temperature variables called interval variables? They are called interval variables because the intervals between the numbers represent something real. This is not the case with ordinal variables.

What are some examples of interval scales?

Examples of interval scales include the Fahrenheit and Celsius temperatures previously mentioned, SAT, GRE, MAT, and IQ scores.

What are some examples of ratio variables?

Some examples of ratio variables are length measures in the english or metric systems, time measures in seconds, minutes, hours, etc., blood pressure measured in millmeters ...

What are the levels of measurement?

This is what’s known as the level of measurement. There are four main levels of measurement: Nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio.

What is the difference between median and mode?

Mode, median, or mean: The mode is the value that occurs most frequently in your dataset, while the median is the middle value. The mean value is the average of all values within your dataset. The mode, median, and mean are all measures of central tendency which help you to gauge how your data are distributed.

What is the difference between interval scale and ordinal scale?

Unlike the ordinal scale, however, the interval scale has a known and equal distance between each value on the scale (imagine the points on a thermometer).

What does a ratio scale mean?

Just like the interval scale, the ratio scale is a quantitative level of measurement with equal intervals between each point. What sets the ratio scale apart is that it has a true zero. That is, a value of zero on a ratio scale means that the variable you’re measuring is absent. Population is a good example of ratio data.

What is nominal scale of measurement?

These are not numbers but categories. A nominal scale of measurement deals with variables that are non-numeric or where the numbers have no value. In other words, we can put them in any order and it wouldn't matter.

What is nominal scale?

A nominal scale includes variables where the order of the units does not matter. Ordinal scales consist of variables where the order matters, but the difference between the units does not matter.

Is breakfast numeric or numeric?

You might have noticed a difference in our two variables. While scores on a math test are reported as numbers, eating breakfast isn't numeric. A person eats a healthy breakfast, an unhealthy breakfast or no breakfast at all. These are not numbers but categories.

What are the letters grades?

Letter grades are typically A, B, C, D, and F, with A being the highest grade and F being the lowest grade. Gender is dichotomous because it has two categories, male and female. Level of customer satisfaction may have categories on a scale ranging from unsatisfied to very satisfied, and is therefore ordinal.

What are quantitative variables?

Quantitative variables have numerical values. Meaningful calculations such as average and standard deviation can be made for quantitative, but not qualitative, variables. Qualitative variables, on the other hand, can be put in groups or categories. For this reason, they are also called categorical variables.

What is nominal scale variable?

A nominal scale variable is classified into two or more categories. In this measurement mechanism, the answer should fall into either of the classes. It is qualitative. The numbers are used here to identify the objects. The numbers don’t define the object characteristics. The only permissible aspect of numbers in the nominal scale is “counting.”.

What is ratio scale?

The ratio scale is the 4 th level of measurement scale, which is quantitative. It is a type of variable measurement scale. It allows researchers to compare the differences or intervals. The ratio scale has a unique feature. It possesses the character of the origin or zero points.

What is ordinal scale?

The ordinal scale is the 2 nd level of measurement that reports the ordering and ranking of data without establishing the degree of variation between them. Ordinal represents the “order.”. Ordinal data is known as qualitative data or categorical data. It can be grouped, named and also ranked.

What is the explanatory variable?

The explanatory variable is the independent variable, which is the variable that is changed to determine its effect on a dependent variable. In this case the explanatory variable is grade level. To determine whether or not grade level influences time spent studying, Samuel has designed a survey.

What is a response variable?

A response variable is a variable that has an effect on a study even though it is neither an independent nor a dependent variable. False. A response variable is defined as the dependent variable in an experiment. A biologist samples and measures the length of the fish in a lake.

What is qualitative attribute?

an attribute whose value is indicated by a label. Qualitative is defined as an attribute whose value is indicated by a label. To determine whether or not number of siblings influences grade point average, Charles has designed a survey.

What is qualitative in psychology?

Qualitative is defined as an attribute whose value is indicated by a label. A 2013 study at Johns Hopkins University wanted to measure if caffeine has an effect on short term memory. The researchers showed images to a group of people. They then gave half the group a 200-mg caffeine pill and the other half a placebo pill containing no caffeine.

Is Celsius a ratio?

However, because Celsius does not have a true zero value, it is not ratio data. What term best describes data that is an attribute whose value is indicated by a label? qualitative. Qualitative is defined as an attribute whose value is indicated by a label.

What is a ratio scale?

Ratio scale: A scale used to label variables that have a natural order, a quantifiable difference between values,and a “true zero” value. Some examples of variables that can be measured on a ratio scale include: Height: Can be measured in centimeters, inches, feet, etc. and cannot have a value below zero.

What is ordinal scale?

Ordinal scale: A scale used to label variables that have a natural order, but no quantifiable difference between values. Some examples of variables that can be measured on an ordinal scale include: Satisfaction: Very unsatisfied, unsatisfied, neutral, satisfied, very satisfied.