What does ordinal measurement focus on?

Ordinal measurement is a type of measurement scale that is primarily concerned with ranking data. It allows researchers to organize items or observations in a specific order based on a particular attribute. However, in ordinal measurement, while the data does have a rank, the intervals or distances between these ranks are not uniform or consistently defined.

For instance, if you survey participants about their satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 5 (where 1 is very dissatisfied and 5 is very satisfied), you can say that a rating of 4 is higher than a rating of 2. However, the difference in satisfaction between 2 and 3 may not be the same as the difference between 4 and 5. This lack of equal intervals is a characteristic that distinguishes ordinal measurement from other types, such as interval or ratio measurement, where the distances are consistent and meaningful.

In summary, ordinal measurement specifically attends to the ranking of data while recognizing that the differences between ranks cannot be accurately quantified, which aligns perfectly with the notion of ranking data where the distance between ranks is not uniform.