Operasionalisasi Konsep

Generalized Wheel of Social

Science
Theories

DEDUCTION
INDUCTION

Empirical Hypotheses
Generalizations

Observations
 Constructing a Deductive Theory
1. Specify the topic.
2. Specify the range of phenomena your
theory addresses.
3. Identify and specify your major concerns
and variables.
 Constructing a Deductive Theory
1. Find out what is known about the
relationships among the variables.
2. Reason from those propositions to the
topic you are interested in.
 Research design – operationalization of
variables
– Chapter 6 in Babbie & Mouton (2001)
• The construction of actual, concrete
measurement techniques; the creation of
“operations” that will result in the desired
measurements.
• The development or choice of specific
research procedures (operations) that will
result in representing the concepts of
interest.
 Operationalization
• turning the research subject (term, issue,
process, phenomenon) into variables that
can be investigated by empirical data
• makes a term concrete
• from theory to empirical analysis
• good operationalization corresponds to
the meaning to the term (within the
particular study); measures what one
wanted to measure; is measurable
 Operationalization

• An operational definition is a procedure for

classifying, ordering, or quantifying something
– Classifying - crowded or not crowded
– Ordering - uncrowded, mildly crowded, severely
crowded
– Quantifying - measure crowdedness in terms of the
number of residents per square kilometre
• Focus on questionnaires – other
operationalization techniques in section on types
of research design
 Choices to be made about
operationalization
• The range of variation – how large should your
categories be?
– Depends on the purpose of your study – pragmatic
considerations (e.g. income)
• Variation between the extremes – how fine are the
disctinctions you want to make in your study?
• e.g. age
– Again, depends on the purpose of your study
– (Why research is such a challenging task – very few recipes)
• Single or multiple indicators of variables
– Some straightforward, such as gender
– But others benefit from multiple indicators
 Conceptualization
• The process through which we specify what
we mean when use particular terms in
research is called conceptualization.
• The result is called a concept
• Concepts have specific and agree-upon
meanings.
 Conceptualization

– = the process of identifying and clarifying

concepts; through which we specify what we
mean by using certain terms
– Indicators indicate the presence or absence of
the concept we are studying. These often are
multi-dimensional; they have more than one
specifiable aspect of facet. E.g. happiness.
 Conceptualization

– We want to speak of abstract things – “intelligence”;

“ability to cope with stress”; “life satisfaction”;
“happiness”.
– We cannot research these things until we know
exactly what they are.
– Everyday language often vague and unspecified
meanings. Conceptualization is to specify exactly
what we mean and don’t mean by the terms we use in
our research.
– No “true” (final) definitions of “the stuff of life”
 Variable, Dimensions and
Indicators of Concepts
• Dimension : a specific aspect of a concept
• Variable: variance of a concept
• An Indicator : the presence or absence of
the concept
• During conceptualization and
operationalization, we often specify
different indicators to represent different
dimensions of a concept.
 Operationalization: developing
specific research procedures to
be used in empirical observations
representing those concepts
Consider:
Range of variation
Degree of precision
 Operational definitions

• Specifying exactly what we are going to observe,

and how we will do it. Turn your variable into a
directly measurable thing
• It is a description of the “operations” that we will
undertake to measure a concept
 Measurement Process:
Conceptualization & Operationalization
• Conceptualization
conceptual definition
• Operationalization
operational definition
 Four Levels of Measurement
• Nominal Measures : differences among
categories
– Ex: gender, religious affiliation, college major
• Ordinal Measures : categories can be ordered or
ranked
– Ex: social class, prejudice
• Interval Measures : can specify the distance
between categories
– Ex: IQ scores
• Ratio Measures : attributes are based on a true
zero point
– Ex: age, # of times married, length of residence in a
given place
 VARIABLES
• Univariat: satu variabel
Kebanyakan mahasiswa UI paling tidak mengunjungi
bioskop sekali seminggu
Variabel: Frekuensi mengunjungi bioskop
• Bivariat: dua variabel
Mahasiswa perempuan mengunjungi bioskop lebih sering
dibandingkan laki-laki
Variabel: 1) jenis kelamin, 2) frekuensi ke bioskop
• Multivariat: banyak variabel
Diantara mahasiswa yang mengalami depresi, laki-laki lebih
sering mengunjungi bioskop dibandingkan perempuan.
Tetapi, diantara mahasiswa yang tidak mengalami depresi,
perempuan lebih sering mengunjungi bioskop.
Variabel: 1)sex, 2) frekuensi ke bioskop, 3) kondisi depresi
atau tidak