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.

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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

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Choices to be made about operationalization



The range of variation categories be?



how large should your

pragmatic

Depends on the purpose of your study 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
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Levels of measurement


Of great concern in psychometrics We look for three elements:

A

zero point  Distances between categories equal  Categories can be rank-ordered rank-

Research design - operationalization

Nominal measures Reflects only categories  The variable gender has two attributes, male and female  They are distinct from one another, but they have no additional structures  Also political party affiliation, birthplace, etc.

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Example


The next question is on the subject of work. People look for different things in a job. Which of the following five things would you most prefer in a job?
1. work that pays well 2. work that gives a feeling of accomplishment 3. work where there is not too much supervision and you make most decisions yourself 4. work that is pleasant and where the other people are nice to work with 5. work that is steady with little chance of being laid off
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Ordinal measures Include the above  Plus we can logically rank-order the rankattributes

 e.g.

social class, prejudice

We can rank order people according to the amount of education they had

Research design - operationalization

Example 1.  2.  3.  4.  5.


very satisfied fairly satisfied neither satisfied nor dissatisfied fairly dissatisfied very dissatisfied

Research design - operationalization

Interval measures
 Include

the above  Plus the intervals between the attributes have meaning
 e.g

scores on an intelligence test

 BUT:
 We

cannot say that a person with an IQ of 120 is TWICE as intelligent as one with an IQ of 60  And the 5 points difference between 110 and 115, and 95 and 100?
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Ratio measures Include all of the above  Plus they have a true zero point
 

e.g.
 how  age  the

long you have lived in Cape Town?

number of times you were married  income

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Implications


Mainly for the analysis of data (the statistics part of the course)

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Indexes and scales

       

Social scientific concepts have complex and varied meanings Often difficult to capture all the dimensions of a concept As a result, we normally make multiple observations, and use more than one indicator of a variable Indexes and scales are techniques to combine indicators of a variable into a single measure of that variable They are composite measures of variables measurements based on more than one data item Typically they are ordinal measures of variables Typical in quantitative research Indexes and scales differ through the manner in which scores are assigned to individual attributes
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Indexes


Constructed through the simple accumulation of scores assigned to individual attributes

e.g. we add the number of items a person agreed with to obtain a total score  e.g. How politically active are you? We give you six statements of political activities you could have been involved in, and if you indicate that you have been involved in three of them, you will obtain a score of 3 on our index of political activism.

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Scales


A scale recognizes that not all responses reflect the same degree of the presence of a variable


e.g. women are different from men is a much weaker statement of the variable sexism than women should not be allowed to vote

Also, it assigns scores to patterns of responses

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Scaling procedures
    

Bogardus social distance scale Thurstone scales Likert scaling Semantic differential Guttman scaling The format of the Likert-type scaling is Likertcommonly used in questionnaire design today
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Shopaholicism
    

1 I enjoy shopping


SAgr SAgr SAgr SAgr

Agr Agr Agr Agr

Neither Dis Neither Dis Neither Dis Neither Dis

Sdis Sdis Sdis Sdis

2 I look forward to going shopping



3 I shop whenever I have the opportunity



4 I avoid shopping if I can



5 When I visit a town or city I don't know well, I always want to see the shops


SAgr SAgr

Agr Agr

Neither Dis

Sdis
16

6 Shopping is a chore that I have to put up with.


Research Neither design - operationalization Dis Sdis

Shopaholicism
 Scoring  Level

- note 4 and 6

of measurement - ordinal or interval/ratio

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