Assuming a variable is coded as: 1=unmarried, 2=married, 3=divorced, 4=widowed, which measurement level should be selected in SAS EMiner?

In this scenario, the variable represents different marital statuses that have distinct categories: unmarried, married, divorced, and widowed. These categories do not have a natural order or ranking among them, meaning one category is not quantitatively greater or lesser than the others.

The appropriate measurement level for this variable is nominal. Nominal measurement indicates that the variable consists of categories that are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive but do not possess an intrinsic ordering. In SAS Enterprise Miner, this would mean selecting the nominal option when defining the variable, as it reflects the qualitative nature of the categories representing marital status.

Selecting the nominal measurement level allows for proper analysis techniques to be applied that are suitable for categorical data, such as frequency counts or chi-square tests, rather than numerical means or orders, which would be inappropriate for such data types.