What are the possible indicators of the concept of gender? Political party is another relatively easy concept for which to identify indicators. In the United States, indicators likely include Democrat and Republican but depending on your research interest, you may include additional indicators such as Independent, Green, or Libertarian.
Age and birthplace are additional examples of concepts for which identifying indicators is a relatively simple process. What concepts are of interest to you, and what are the possible indictors of those concepts? As described earlier, utilizing prior theoretical and empirical work in your area of interest is a great way to identify indicators in a scholarly manner. Theories will point you in the direction of relevant concepts and possible indicators.
Empirical work will give you some very specific examples of how the important concepts in an area have been measured in the past and what sorts of indicators have been used. Often, it makes sense to use the same indicators as previous researchers, however you may find that some previous measures have potential weaknesses that your own methodological approach can overcome.
Speaking of methodological approaches, it is also important to think about your data collection strategy when considering indicators and concept measurements. A survey implies one way of measuring concepts, while focus groups imply a quite different way of measuring concepts.
Your design choices will play an important role in shaping how you measure your concepts. Taking your concepts through the steps of identification, conceptualization, and operationalization is a matter of increasing specificity. You begin the research process with a general interest, then you identify a few essential concepts, work to define those concepts, and then spell out precisely how you will measure them. In quantitative research, that final stage is called operationalization.
An operational definition consists of the following components: 1 the variable being measured, 2 the measure you will use, 3 how you plan to interpret the results of that measure.
The first component, the variable, should be the easiest part. At this point in quantitative research, you should have a research question that has at least one independent and at least one dependent variable.
Remember that variables must be able to vary. For example, the United States is not a variable. Country of birth is a variable, as is patriotism. Similarly, if your sample only includes men, gender is a constant in your study…not a variable. Remember, this would be a negative relationship—as depression increases, satisfaction decreases.
In this question, depression is my independent variable the cause and satisfaction with care is my dependent variable the effect. Now we have identified our variables, we move onto the second component, which is deals with measurements.
How do you measure depression or satisfaction? They may also say that a depressed person will often express feelings of sadness or hopelessness. In addition, a satisfied person might be happy around service providers and often express gratitude. While these factors may indicate that the variables are present, they lack coherence. Your judgment is subjective, based on your own idiosyncratic experiences with depression and satisfaction.
Operationalization requires that you come up with a specific and rigorous measure for seeing who is depressed or satisfied.
Finding a good measure for your variable can take less than a minute. Measuring a variable like income might require some more thought, though. This might matter if your participant does not work or is dependent on other family members for income.
Do you count income from social welfare programs? Are you interested in their income per month or per year? Measures must be specific and clear. Show page numbers Download PDF. Search form icon-arrow-top icon-arrow-top. Page Site Advanced 7 of Disciplines : Communication and Media Studies , Sociology. Buy in print. Looks like you do not have access to this content. It states which condition of the IV will perform better or worse than the other.
It must include the DV and be operationalised. Male participants will score more basketball hoops than female participants. Participants whop have been trained in a memory improvement strategy will correctly recall more items from a list than participants who have not been trained. Nondirectional hypotheses A nondirectional prediction of what is expected to happen.
It states that there will be a difference between the conditions of the IV, but it does not state which will perform better or worse. There will be a difference between male and female participants in the number of basketball hoops scored.
There will be a difference in the number of items correctly recalled from a list between participants who have had memory improvement training and those who have not. Null hypotheses A statement that nothing will happen. It states there will be no difference between the conditions of the IV.
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