You are asked to conduct research on the behavior of drivers at stop signs. Please address the following for the concept of STOPPING AT A STOP SIGN in preparation for this research.
1. What will be your unit of analysis? – What are you researching?
2. Operationalize the concept:
a. create an operational definition (of stopping at a stop sign)
b. create a variable and determine the attributes (assign each a number or letter code). (As you do this part, make sure the attributes are exhaustive and mutually exclusive).
3. Determine the level of measurement represented by your variable.
PART II:
Measurement of Variables:
Please read more in your textbook and my notes under Modules:
Summary:
Nominal: only exhaustive and mutually exclusiveness examples are gender, race, residence, college major, SSN, and marital status, they are labels or names for characteristics.
Ordinal: logically ranked attributes, ordered in some way, examples are opinions of police, occupational status, seriousness of crimes, and fear of crime.
Interval: actual distances are used to separate attributes composing a variable. example would be IQ tests, the distance between 100 and 110 is the same as 110 and 120
Ratio: This also meets the requirements for distance, but This is the only one that has a true zero point, So examples of this would be, age, dollar value of property, loss from burglary, number of arrests, blood alcohol content and length of incarceration.
Questions:
1. An evaluation of a prevention program includes the statement that “the average delinquency of adolescents was reduced by 33% during the time of the study.” If this statement is literally true, the level of measurement of delinquency in the study was at least:
A) Nominal
B) Ordinal
C) Interval
D) Ratio
Answer:
2. In a national survey of drug abuse, the variable “region” includes West, Southwest, South, Southeast, East, Northeast, Midwest, and Northwest. The level of measurement is:
A) Nominal
B) Ordinal
C) Interval
D) Ratio
Answer:
3. In a national survey of drug abuse, the variable “frequency of use” is measured by asking respondents to rate their levels of drug use. The ratings are made on a scale from 1 (low levels) to 5 (high levels). The level of measurement is:
A) Nominal
B) Ordinal
C) Interval
D) Ratio
Answer:
4. In a national survey of drug abuse, the variable “parental alcoholism” is measured as the number of times that respondents observed their parents drunk. The level of measurement is:
A) Nominal
B) Ordinal
C) Interval
D) Ratio
Answer:
5. In order to determine the relationship between weather and crime, the researcher’s measures and records the temperature. Temperature is an example of which level of measurement?
A) Nominal
B) Ordinal
C) Interval
D) Ratio
Answer:

You are asked to conduct research on the behavior of drivers at sto...