point making it ratio data. On the other hand, Data Set 2 consists of ranked data provided by teams of judges. Ranked data is ordinal data which does not have either a true zero point, nor is it equal interval in nature (Gavin, 2008). Therefore Data Set 2 would require analysis using the Spearman correlation. It should be noted here that ordinal data is considered to be less accurate and less precise than ratio or equal-interval data and for this reason is often termed 'lower order' or 'lower level' data (Woodbury, 2001).
In real-life research, constraints on the type of research that can be conducted and limitations on how the data can be collected often mean that a researcher is not able to collect numerical or interval data and must settle for a lower level of data; in these cases, if the interest is in an association between two variables, the researcher must settle for using data that are of a lesser order mathematically (Goodwin, 2007). T
...