Author: Ernad Mujakic
Date: 2025-07-07

Ordinal data is a type of Categorical Data that represents categories that a defined order or ranking. Unlike Nominal Data, which has no intrinsic ordering, ordinal data allows for the comparison of the relative positioning of items.

A key property of ordinal data is that the interval between adjacent ranks is not necessarily equal. For example, the interval between "expensive" and "average" is not necessarily equal to the interval between "cheap" and "average."

Another key property of Ordinal data is that it is non-numeric. While ordinal variables may be represented by numbers (e.g. 1, 2, 3), these numbers are only labels that indicate orders and not precise values.

Examples of ordinal data include attributes like education levels (e.g. High School, Bachelor's, Masters), or survey responses (e.g. Unsatisfied, Neutral, Satisfied).

The analysis of ordinal data requires specific statistical techniques that respect the inherent order of the categories while acknowledging that the intervals between them are not necessarily uniform.