Certified Rehabilitation Counselor Practice

Which of the following scales indicates an ordering but does not indicate distances between objects?

1. Nominal scale

2. Ratio scale

3. Ordinal scale

4. Interval scale

The correct answer is: Ordinal scale

The correct choice is the ordinal scale, which is designed specifically to indicate an ordering of items or categories without providing precise measurements of distance between them. In an ordinal scale, data can be arranged in a sequence based on a specific characteristic, such as ranking preferences, levels of agreement, or levels of satisfaction. For example, rankings of running speeds (like 1st, 2nd, and 3rd) show an order but do not quantify how much faster one runner is than another. Unlike the nominal scale, which categorizes data without any order, and the ratio or interval scales, which provide both distance measurements and a meaningful zero point (ratio scale) or equal intervals (interval scale), the ordinal scale lacks the concept of uniformity in the differences between the ranks. Thus, while it provides a clear framework for comparing the order of items, it refrains from suggesting how much greater or lesser one item is compared to another.