What level of measurement is gender classified as?

Gender is classified as a nominal level of measurement because it involves categorical data that can be used to label variables without providing any quantitative value or ranking among them. In nominal measurement, the categories are mutually exclusive and do not possess an inherent order. This means that when we categorize individuals by gender, such as male or female, there is no hierarchy or numerical relationship between the categories. Each category simply represents a different subgroup without implying any quantitative differentiation.

In contrast, ordinal measurement would imply a sense of order or ranking among categories (such as high to low), while interval and ratio measurements involve numerical values with specified distances and meaningful zero points. Since gender does not meet the criteria for those levels, nominal is the appropriate classification for this type of data.