Nominal variables

NOMINAL VARIABLE

A nominal variable is a type of variable that is used to name, label or categorize particular attributes that are being measured. It takes qualitative values representing different categories, and there is no intrinsic ordering of these categories.

You can code nominal variables with numbers, but the order is arbitrary and arithmetic operations cannot be performed on the numbers. This is the case when a person’s phone number, National Identification Number postal code, etc. are being collected.

A nominal variable is one of the 2 types of categorical variables and is the simplest among all the measurement variables. Some examples of nominal variables include gender, Name, phone, etc....

Types of Variables

Look at the left side of Figure  below. You can see that one way to look at variables is to divide them into four different categories ( nominal, ordinal,  interval and ratio). These refer to the levels of measure associated with the variables. In everyday usage the convention is to then use the level of measure to refer to the kind of variable. So you can then speak of nominal, ordinal, interval, etc. variables.

One isn't necessarily better than another category. But, it is true you typically have more information with some than with others, and you're more used to working with some than with others.
With interval and ratio variables for example, you can do averages and things like that. You know there are numbers. You can add them up, divide and things like that. Its a little trickier sometimes with nominal and ordinal variables. But in human experiments there's no way you can get around it. You often work with nominal or ordinal variables.

Types of Variables

References

https://www.uth.tmc.edu/uth_orgs/educ_dev/oser/L1_2.HTM

https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/other/nominal-data/

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