Certification Board of Infection Control and Epidemiology (CBIC) Practice Exam 2025 – The All-in-One Guide for Exam Success

A nominal scale is primarily used for assigning numbers for identification purposes. This type of scale categorizes data without any quantitative value or order. Instead of representing a quantity or ranking, the numbers serve as labels or identifiers for different categories or groups. For example, in a healthcare context, patient IDs might be represented by numbers; however, those numbers do not imply any ranking or measurement but simply differentiate one patient from another.

In contrast, the other options involve different kinds of measurement scales. Time measurement, as mentioned in the first choice, generally requires an interval or ratio scale where the order and differences between values are meaningful. Ordering responses based on rank corresponds to an ordinal scale, which does involve a specific order but does not define the intervals between ranks. Quantifying measurable data, found in the last option, is characteristic of interval or ratio scales where actual measurements and their magnitudes are taken into account. Thus, the unique function of the nominal scale lies solely in its capacity for classification rather than quantification or ranking.