SCS 2150 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: No Labels, Scientific Method

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Social Sciences
• Course: SCS 2150
• Professor: Stephanie Mullen

Document Summary

Revisit the difference between nominal, ordinal & interval levels of measurement: (ex of question: she can give survey question and ask what measure it is); (no definitions or compare/contrast) Understand how levels of measure are reflected in the answers to survey questions. You should always strive for the highest level of measurement that is useful for the research question at hand: response rates are higher when you use the right level of measurement. Important points on writing survey questions (mentioned better later): Be clear (what is your income - unclear - family, individual, gross, after- tax income??) Keep response categories mutually exclusive & exhaustive (no overlap in categories & have all choices available as a category - other & no response ) Disadvantage in one = advantage in another. Expensive because answers are long; hard to categorize so many different answers: political surveys" question what is the most important issue of the day usually open-ended.