What would be a possible ratio level measure of religiosity?
A. Whether or not a person believes in God
B. Type of religion a person identifies with
C. The degree of one's belief in the afterlife
D. The number of times a person has been to church in the past month.
So my understanding of ratio scales it that they must have an absolute zero value. What I don't get is why C couldn't be right. Couldn't someone have no belief in the afterlife, coinciding with a 0 value?
Hi
@Wolfpack93 !
There are different
levels of measurement that can be classified into four categories.
Nominal measurement. In this level of measurement, the numbers are used to classify the data. Words and letters can be used. Suppose there are data about people belonging to two different genders. In this case, the person belonging to the female gender could be classified as F, and the person belonging to the male gender could be classified as M. This type of assigning classification is nothing but the nominal level of measurement.
Ordinal level of measurement. This level of measurement depicts some ordered relationship between the number of items. Suppose a student scores the maximum marks in the class. In this case, he would be assigned the first rank. Then, the person scoring the second highest marks would be assigned the second rank, and so on. This level of measurement signifies some specific reason behind the assignment. The ordinal level of measurement indicates an approximate ordering of the measurements. The researcher should note that in this type of measurement, the difference or the ratio between any two types of rankings is not the same along the scale.
Interval level of measurement. The interval level of measurement not only classifies and orders the measurements, but it also specifies that the distances between each interval on the scale are equivalent along the scale from low interval to high interval. For example, an interval level of measurement could be the measurement of anxiety in a student between the score of 10 and 11, if this interval is the same as that of a student who is in between the score of 40 and 41. A popular example of this level of measurement is temperature in C, where, for example, the distance between 508 C and 510 C is the same as the distance between 100 C and 102 C.
Ratio level of measurement. In this level of measurement, the measurements can have a value of zero as well, which makes this type of measurement unlike the other types of measurement, although the properties are similar to that of the interval level of measurement. In the ratio level of measurement, the divisions between the points on the scale have an equivalent distance between them, and the rankings assigned to the items are according to their size.
For this question, you will want to read the answer carefully. Choice C implies the belief is there, and is quantified by the responder. Another reason this choice could be wrong is the degree of belief need not be at fixed intervals, nor do we know the exact scale that is being used. Only choice D is something that
must be quantified in integer values, with fixed intervals between each implied choice.
On the real exam, the AAMC will provide several tempting answer choices that could be correct, often on tougher questions we need to pick the choice with the fewest or no flaws.
Hope this helps, good luck!
