How do you statistically analyse ordinal data?

Friend of mine has some data to analyse from a questionnaire with answers being e.g. 1-5 with 1 being dislike, 5 being love.


Which statistical tests/distributions can you use on data like this to provide an analysis?


Thanks for any help.xx

How do you statistically analyse ordinal data?
If you want to test whether there are differences among the scale measurements, you can arrange them in a frequncy table


1 20


2 32


3 11


4 27


5 3


where 20,32 etc. indicate the number of people who answered 'like', 'dislike' etc.


The type of analysis depends on what you want to analyze. If you want to test whether the 5 categories are different, an ANOVA is appropriate. If you want to test between 'like' and 'dislike', you can use a Wilcoxon Mann-Whitney test which is good for ordinal data.


These tests involve comparison of two gropus only, whereas Kruskal-Wallis test (use the frequncy figures) as 5 groups.


There are 2 sources


(1) Mann-Whitney test


(2) Kruskal-Wallis test