Central Tendency and the Ordinal Level of Measurement With ordinal level variables, it is possible to use both the mode and the median. As already indicated, the mode is the most frequently occurring score. Consider the following example:
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How happy are you?
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very happy
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very happy
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very happy
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somewhat happy
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not so happy
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In this distribution, the modal response to the question "How happy are you?" is "very happy."
Likewise, we can identify the median response or the middle response by ordering the distribution. Note our distribution is already ordered from happy to unhappy and the median response is "very happy."
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