Scale (social sciences)

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In the social sciences, scaling is the process of measuring or ordering entities with respect to quantitative attributes or traits. For example, a scaling technique might involve estimating individuals' levels of extraversion, or the perceived quality of products. Certain methods of scaling permit estimation of magnitudes on a continuum, while other methods provide only for relative ordering of the entities.

The level of measurement is the type of data that is measured.

The word scale, including in academic literature, is sometimes used to refer to another composite measure, that of an index. Those concepts are however different.^[1]