Variable and attribute (research) in the context of "Data"

The measures used in economics are physical measures, nominal price value measures and fixed price value measures. These measures differ from one another by the variables they measure and by the variables excluded from measurements. The measurable variables in economics are quantity, quality and distribution. Excluding variables from measurement makes it possible to better focus the measurement on a given variable, yet, this means a more narrow approach. The table was compiled to compare the basic types of measurement. The first column presents the measure types, the second the variables being measured, and the third column gives the variables excluded from measurement.

Measurement is the quantification of attributes of an object or event, which can be used to compare with other objects or events. In other words, measurement is a process of determining how large or small a physical quantity is as compared to a basic reference quantity of the same kind.The scope and application of measurement are dependent on the context and discipline. In natural sciences and engineering, measurements do not apply to nominal properties of objects or events, which is consistent with the guidelines of the International Vocabulary of Metrology (VIM) published by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM). However, in other fields such as statistics as well as the social and behavioural sciences, measurements can have multiple levels, which would include nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio scales.

Measurement is a cornerstone of trade, science, technology and quantitative research in many disciplines. Historically, many measurement systems existed for the varied fields of human existence to facilitate comparisons in these fields. Often these were achieved by local agreements between trading partners or collaborators. Since the 18th century, developments progressed towards unifying, widely accepted standards that resulted in the modern International System of Units (SI). This system reduces all physical measurements to a mathematical combination of seven base units. The science of measurement is pursued in the field of metrology.

The Stanford prison experiment (SPE), also referred to as the Zimbardo prison experiment (ZPE), was a controversial psychological experiment performed in August 1971 at Stanford University. It was designed to be a two-week simulation of a prison environment that examined the effects of situational variables on participants' reactions and behaviors. Stanford University psychology professor Philip Zimbardo managed the research team who administered the study. Zimbardo ended the experiment early after realizing the guard participants' abuse of the prisoners had gone too far.

Participants were recruited from the local community through an advertisement in the newspapers offering $15 per day ($119.41 in 2025) to male students who wanted to participate in a "psychological study of prison life". 24 participants were chosen after assessments of psychological stability and then assigned randomly to the role of prisoners or prison guards. Critics have questioned the validity of these methods.Those volunteers selected to be "guards" were given uniforms designed specifically to de-individuate them, and they were instructed to prevent prisoners from escaping. The experiment started officially when "prisoners" were arrested by the real police of Palo Alto. During the next five days, psychological abuse of the prisoners by the "guards" became increasingly brutal. After psychologist Christina Maslach visited to evaluate the conditions, she was troubled to see how study participants were behaving and she confronted Zimbardo. He ended the experiment on the sixth day.

Grouped data are data formed by aggregating individual observations of a variable into groups, so that a frequency distribution of these groups serves as a convenient means of summarizing or analyzing the data. There are two major types of grouping: data binning of a single-dimensional variable, replacing individual numbers by counts in bins; and grouping multi-dimensional variables by some of the dimensions (especially by independent variables), obtaining the distribution of ungrouped dimensions (especially the dependent variables).