UGC NET Questions (Paper – 1)

A nominal scale assigns symbols or numbers to categories simply to distinguish them, such as coding males as 1 and females as 2, without any inherent ranking. The categories are mutually exclusive and exhaustive, but the numbers have no quantitative meaning. Only equality or difference between categories can be assessed. Therefore, a labelling operation without order is known as nominal scaling.

Option A:
An ordinal scale does imply a meaningful order among categories, such as ranks or levels of agreement, where higher numbers correspond to higher positions. Since the stem specifies that numbers do not imply any order, ordinal scale cannot be correct.

Option B:
Nominal scales are common for variables like religion, occupation or region, where categories are different but not ranked. Statistical operations are limited to counts and mode, which aligns with the purely classificatory function described in the stem.

Option C:
Interval scales have equal units and allow meaningful addition and subtraction but lack a true zero, such as temperature in Celsius. They provide more information than simple labels and thus do not correspond to the non-ordered classification mentioned in the question.

Option D:
Ratio scales possess all the properties of interval scales plus a true zero, enabling meaningful ratio comparisons, such as height or weight. They go far beyond mere labelling, so ratio scale is not the appropriate completion for the stem.

A nominal scale involves categorising observations into distinct groups that have no inherent order, such as gender, religion or blood type. The categories are mutually exclusive and exhaustive but cannot be ranked meaningfully. Only counts and mode are appropriate descriptive measures. Therefore, classifying respondents by gender uses a nominal scale.

Option A:
Nominal measurement simply names or labels categories without implying that one category is greater or less than another. In the gender example, categories like male, female or other do not fall into a natural order, confirming that the scale is nominal and making this option correct.

Option B:
An ordinal scale ranks categories in terms of order, such as low, medium and high, but does not guarantee equal intervals; this is not what is happening in simple gender classification.

Option C:
Interval scales have equal intervals and allow meaningful differences, as in temperature measured in degrees, but do not apply to purely categorical variables like gender.

Option D:
Ratio scales add a true zero point and support meaningful ratios, such as weight or height; these properties are irrelevant to categorising gender, so ratio is not the correct answer.