part 1.
A lot depends on your discipline. Since the issue of level of measurement rose
in the 60's and early 70's there have been different viewpoint.
For some qualitative data means textual or pictorial information.
For some it means nominal level data.
For some it means variables that the measurement system allows to have only a
few specific values.
Categorical data is sometimes used synonymously with qualitative.
I tend to think of levels of measurement in an expanded version of Steven's
schema.
Nominal level variables have names but no ordering, city, town, genus, school,
etc.
They can be changed into a vector of dichotomies (e.g., dummy variables).
Dichotomies may be the only purely interval data in the social sciences. Since
there is only one interval, all intervals are perfectly equal to each other.
Voltolini wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a doubt about ordinal variables !
>
> I understand that months (jan., feb., mar.) and level of aggression (low,
> medium, high) can be accepted as qualitative ordinal variables but........
> my doubt is.....
>
> What about variables like seed size when using categories like small, medium
> and large or... level of mutation as rare and frequent ? Is these variables
> qualitative ? May I use these cases as examples of qualitative and ordinal
> variables ?
>
> I am in doubt because the size of seeds or the frequency of mutations are
> measurements and counts !
>
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