As for this problem that concerns about standard deviation and its meaning, the most probable and the most likely answer to this would be C. average distance between variable scores and the mean in a set of data.
Standard deviation refers to the average distance between variable scores and the mean in a set of data. This would imply as to what options are being chosen in a number of options. This would also allow the experimenter to understand how the participants have answered the survey and as to what options were popularly used by the participants.
