Business Research MethodMeasurement, Scaling, Reliability, Validity

M.Com-II

• Nominal:– Nominal” scales could simply be called “labels.” A

good way to remember all of this is that “nominal” sounds a lot like “name” and nominal scales are kind of like “names” or labels.

Ordinal

• With ordinal scales, it is the order of the values is what’s important and significant, but the differences between each one is not really known.

Interval

• Interval scales are numeric scales in which we know not only the order, but also the exact differences between the values.

For example, the difference between 60 and 50 degrees is a measurable 10 degrees, as is the difference between 80 and 70 degrees.

Ratio

• Ratio scales are the ultimate nirvana when it comes to measurement scales because they tell us about the order, they tell us the exact value between units, AND they also have an absolute zero.

Construct validity

How well the results obtained from the use of measure fit the theories around which the test is designed.• Convergent validity: when the score obtained with

two different instruments measuring the same concept are highly correlated.

• Discriminant validity: based on theory when two variables are predicted to be uncorrelated, and the scores obtained by measuring them are indeed empirically found to be so.

• Inter-item consistency reliability: consistency of respondents’ answer to all items in a measure. all items should be correlated.

• Split-half reliability: correlation between two halves of an instrument.