What is ordinal data?

Ordinal data are categorical data where there is a logical ordering to the categories. A good example is the Likert scale that you see on many surveys: 1=Strongly disagree; 2=Disagree; 3=Neutral; 4=Agree; 5=Strongly agree.

While computation of a median is easily justified for ordinal data, some statisticians have reservations about computing a mean for ordinal data.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. It was written by Steve Simon on 2002-10-11, edited by Steve Simon, and was last modified on 2010-04-01. This page needs major revisions. Category: Definitions.