In which category would 'happy' or 'sad' fall under when surveying?

The terms 'happy' or 'sad' are classified as categorical data because they describe qualities or characteristics that can be categorized but not quantified numerically. Categorical data is used to represent distinct groups or categories without implying any order or ranking among them.

In this case, happiness and sadness are emotional states that can be placed into distinct categories (such as 'happy', 'sad', 'neutral'), but they do not have a numerical value or a measurable quantity associated with them. This makes them fit perfectly within the framework of categorical data, where researchers can count occurrences of each category but cannot perform arithmetic operations like addition or averaging on them.

While ordinal data also involves categories, it specifically implies a ranking or a natural order (for example, 'satisfied', 'neutral', 'dissatisfied'), which is not applicable to the emotional states mentioned here. Numerical and continuous data, on the other hand, involve quantities that can be measured, which again, does not apply to the qualitative nature of happiness or sadness.