Fundamentals of Compensation Quantitative Methods

Ordinal Measurements

Ordinal measurements have, in addition to nominal properties, rank differences. That is, the numerical value of these scales indicates that there are not only differences between categories but that these are quantifiable differences. An ordinal scale ranks "observations" with regard to the extent to which they possess more or less of a given quality. The ranks do not, however, indicate the degree of difference (how much more or less) of the property each observation has.

There are events with dimensions that cannot be readily quantified. It would be absurd to state that a painting is twice as beautiful as another or that a restaurant has food one-third as tasty as another. For this reason, ordinal scales are often applied to observed events that differ along qualitative rather than quantitative dimensions (especially when the qualitative dimension cannot be easily expressed quantitatively).

For example, job evaluation plans often consist of the following factors:

• Problem Complexity
• Responsibility
• Human/Social Challenges
• Skill
• Authority
• Impact on Profit

These factors cannot be easily broken down into quantifiable units. For example, can one job have two times as much the problem complexity as another?

However, within each factor there can be a breakdown of steps. For example, problem complexity might be broken down by:

These steps may be described as "ordinally ranked."