What type of data is characteristic of an ordinal variable?

An ordinal variable is characterized by categorical data that possesses a natural order or ranking among the categories but does not specify the magnitude of difference between them. This means that while we can say that one category is greater than, less than, or equal to another in terms of rank, we cannot quantify how much greater or less it is.

For example, consider a satisfaction survey where responses are categorized as "poor," "fair," "good," and "excellent." These categories can be ranked in order of satisfaction, but the difference between "good" and "excellent" is not quantifiable. Thus, an ordinal variable captures the essence of having order, making the first choice the correct description of an ordinal variable.