Types of Measurement
In the table below are the various types of data that you may generate from your experiments. This is not an exhaustive list, but it should cover most of what you will come across.
| Type of data |
Example |
Level of
measurement |
| Binary |
usually 0, 1: yes/no (e.g., disease present/absent) |
Nominal scale |
| Binomial |
a proportion: e.g., number of successes in many
yes/no trials |
Interval scale |
| Categorical |
unrelated categories; e.g., country of origin, species |
Nominal scale |
| Continuous |
continuous real numbers; e.g., reaction times |
Ordinal/interval/ratio |
| Count |
non-negative integer values: e.g., number of pups in litter |
Ratio scale |
| Ordinal |
some kind of ranking scale where items are non-independent: e.g., temperature |
Ordinal scale |