---
title: Variable
description: "At the most abstract: anything on which things may have different values. Typically in our field these are things on which people may have different values: height, weight, age, pre-therapy questionnaire scores are all examples of \"continuous\" variables in that…"
url: "https://www.psyctc.org/psyctc/glossary2/variable/"
updated: "2021-06-13"
category: All OM book glossary entries
---

# Variable

At the most abstract: anything on which things may have different values. Typically in our field these are things on which people may have different values: height, weight, age, pre-therapy questionnaire scores are all examples of "continuous" variables in that there are many possible scores (if the questionnaire is any good!) By contrast "attended" is a binary variable describing a therapy session: someone either did attend or not (whereas lateness is a continuous variable).

#### Details

Generally in our field a variable may have **missing values**, e.g. where someone did not complete a measure. Continuous variables are often separated into **ratio**, **interval** and **ordinal** though the distinction is often overvalued. Binary variables are a particular set among categorical variables and categorical variables, for example, modality of therapy, may have a number of values (greater than two otherwise they are binary categorical variables) and there is no clear ordering of the values.

#### Try also ...

Missing values
Ratio variables
Interval variables
Ordinal variables
Distribution

#### Chapters

Nothing here yet!