About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about measurement scales and their origin within the field of psychology, focusing in particular on: (i) early research into measurement in psychology in the 1940’s, which concluded that things were not being measured in the field; (ii) Stanley Smith Steven’s disagreement with this viewpoint, highlighted in his 1946 paper, which argued that measurement was being misunderstood; (iii) Stevens’ four levels of measurement: nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio; (iv) examples of each of those measurement levels in real data; (v) the book series ‘Foundations of Measurement’, which provides the most comprehensive review of how to apply statistical tools to measurements.

About the lecturer

Professor Dominic Dwyer is the chair for the BSc and MSc exam boards in the School of Psychology at Cardiff University. Professor Dwyer teaches introductory statistics for undergraduate years one and two. Professor Dwyer’s research is primarily focused on how animals and people learn, as well as how that learning is expressed as behaviour. Some key focus areas of this research are computational modelling, neurodegenerative disorders, and the assessment of individual differences. Some of Professor Dwyer’s recent publications include 'EXPRESS: Instrumental responses and Pavlovian stimuli as temporal referents in a peak procedure' (2022) and 'Face masks have emotion-dependent dissociable effects on accuracy and confidence in identifying facial expressions of emotion' (2022).