Metric Variables

Abstract

In Chapter 1, we studied how recall of an event varied in time. There, we had a simple frequency table. We shall now consider a more complex case, where we have a vector of responses at each time point. Our example concerns the attitude towards treatment of criminals by the courts in the USA between 1972 and 1975 (Table 3.1). The five attitudes are: (1) too harshly, (2) not harshly enough, (3) about right, (4) don’t know, and (5) no answer. We have the number of responses to each category over a period of five years. Note that this is not a panel, since the same individuals were not asked each time. Thus, we have no indication of how individual opinions change.