Datatype for different categories in a database
Speaking from the programming side of the house, I would do a numerical value that is a foreign key to a "type" table. This way if you change the text value, all previous entries automatically update, and adding new types is just a matter of adding them into the table.

This has the added benefit that if you do something like an interface with a dropdown list to select the value, it also automatically updates and there are no coding changes needed to update the list.