Glossary O

Glossary O

In the psychology context, the order effect refers to how the sequence in which stimuli, information, or experiences are presented can influence individuals' perceptions, memory, judgments, and decision-making. This phenomenon is particularly relevant in research design, surveys, psychological testing, and everyday decision-making processes. Order effects can significantly impact the outcomes of experiments and the reliability of psychological assessments, highlighting the importance of considering sequence as a potential variable or confound.

Order effects. Please see Testing effects. Whenever individuals participate in a series of treatment conditions and experience a series of measurements, their behavior or performance at any point in the series may be influenced by experience that occurred earlier in the sequence. Order effects include carryover effects and progressive error.

Ordinal measure is defined as a level of measurement describing a variable with attributes we can rank-order along some dimension. An example would be Socio-economic status as composed of the attributes high, medium, low. Please see nominal measure, interval measure, and ratio measure.

Ordinal scale is defined as a scale of measurement on which the categories have different names and are organized sequentially, such as first, second, third, etc.

Ordinality refers to a basic understanding of more than and less than relationships.

Ordinary means of treatment are interventions to support life that have predictable and well-recognized outcomes; that offer no unusual risk, suffering, or burden for the person being treated or for others; and that are effective; such interventions are thought to be obligatory in some systems of moral theology and bioethics

Ordinate is the vertical axis (see y-axis) of a graph, upon which the levels of a dependent variable are often represented; the vertical axis (or Y-axis) in a graph.

Oregon "Death with Dignity Act” refers to a legislation that went into effect in October 1997 in the state of Oregon which specifies the conditions under which a terminally ill, adult resident of the state is permitted to request that a physician provide a prescription for lethal medication that an individual can use to end his or her life. It is commonly described as authorizing physician-assisted suicide.