Date:         Wed, 3 Dec 2008 10:08:13 -0500
Reply-To:     Gene Maguin <emaguin@buffalo.edu>
Sender:       "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Gene Maguin <emaguin@buffalo.edu>
Subject:      Re: data type
In-Reply-To:  <6321484818D5104A800588E8BCA69E3202623921@exchange01.fcps.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

Resha,

What you do depends how you plan analyze the data and what your needs are
for their presentation. In any event, I'd recode your data to numbers to
give yourself more analytical flexibility. If your audience expects to see
GPAs, then you need 'continuous' data type analyses. If the interest is in
letter grade distribution, then categorical type analyses. But underlying
those two comments, do you think that the increment in subject
competency/knowledge as you move from F to D to C to B to A is constant? I
don't. Do you think that a C indicates half the subject competency/knowledge
as an A? I don't. But, the assumption is a useful fiction.

Gene Maguin

>>I am going to do some analyses on Final Grades (A, B, C, D, F). Should I
consider Final Grades as ordinal data? Or, if I recode A to 4 points, B
to 3 points, C to 2 points, D to 1 point and F to 0 points, would it be
considered interval/ratio?

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