What type of data allows ranking but not quantitative assessment?

Study for the GIS Professional Certification Exam. Prepare with flashcards and multiple-choice questions, each question includes hints and explanations. Get ready for your certification!

The type of data that allows for ranking but does not support quantitative assessment is ordinal data. Ordinal data is characterized by the presence of a meaningful order among the categories, which means that while you can determine that one category is higher or lower than another, the actual difference between those ranks is not consistent or measurable in a meaningful way.

For example, if you consider survey responses like "satisfied," "neutral," and "dissatisfied," you can rank them in terms of satisfaction levels, but you cannot quantify the exact difference between "satisfied" and "neutral." This lack of a defined interval between the ranks distinguishes ordinal data from other types of data that do allow for quantitative assessments, such as interval or ratio data, where not only the order but also the exact differences between values can be objectively measured.

In the context of the other answer choices, nominal data does not allow any kind of ranking as it deals with categories that are not ordered. Nominal-ordinal data isn’t a standard classification within the context of data types and is effectively covered under ordinal data, and interval data permits both ranking and precise quantitative assessment, unlike ordinal data.

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