Research Methods- Fully answer questions

In an earlier discussion, you were provided with the basic ingredients necessary to construct a research question.  Two of these ingredients were an independent variable and a dependent variable.  Once you have decided on an independent variable and a dependent variable, you are far on your way toward constructing a research question.

But, in research, when we speak of variables, we need to be careful about what we mean.  We can’t use our words casually as we often do in conversation.  Concepts can be defined in different ways by different people.  If we aren’t careful in specifying exactly how we are defining something, we may end up thinking we are talking about the same thing when in reality we’re talking about different things.

When we refer to a particular variable, whatever that variable might be, we need to spend time defining it very precisely so everyone will know exactly what we mean.  

Conceptualization is the process by which researchers define what they are attempting to study as precisely as possible.  

Say our research question is a descriptive one: are religious people less likely to commit crime?   Before pursuing this question, we need to define what we mean by religious.  What does it mean that a person is religious rather than non-religious?  The answer isn’t obvious, but we need to settle on a definition in order to move forward.  Sometimes our definition of a concept is influenced by considerations of how we might measure it.   Considerations of measurement are referred to as operationalization .

Operationalization

In the process of defining a term, we also need to think about how we’re going to measure the concept.   Operationalization refers to the process of figuring out how to measure the concepts that interest us.  When we operationalize something, we figure out how we are going to measure it.  Many of the most common concepts are not tangible.  We cannot really point to them directly.  Instead, we have to find a way to measure them, often indirectly.  

Consider again the concept of religiosity.  This is not something we can directly observe.  We can’t look in someone’s brain and see how much time they spend thinking about God.  We can’t tell for sure how much considerations of the supernatural govern the decisions they make in life.  Instead, we can only make indirect measurements of religiosity.  For example, we can infer that someone is religious when they report attending religious services every week.  In addition, we might infer that someone is religious if they pray on a daily basis or report to us that religion is very important in their lives.  

Consider again the concept of religiosity.  This is not something we can observe directly.  We can’t look in someone’s brain and see how much time they spend thinking about God.  We can’t tell for sure how much considerations of the supernatural govern the decisions they make in life.  Instead, we can only make indirect measurements of religiosity.  For example, we can infer that someone is religious when they report attending religious services every week.  In addition, we might infer that someone is religious if they pray on a daily basis or report to us that religion is very important in their lives.

The diagram below illustrates what I’m talking about.  The concept I’m trying to measure – religiosity – is enclosed in a circle.  We can’t measure what’s in the circle directly.  What we can observe – through survey questions – is enclosed in the squares.  Through surveys, we can query how often people attend religious services, how often they pray, and whether they tell us that religion is important to them.  People’s answers to these questions can then be used to help define whether someone is religious or not.

Self-defined as religious or not

Reported frequency of prayer

Reported frequency of religious service attendance

Religiosity (how religious is a person?)

Often, for convenience, we rely on operational definitions of concepts.  An operational definition of a concept is a definition of the concept terms of how it is measured.  So an operational definition of religiousness here would be whether a person reports high levels of religious service attendance, prayer and/or religious importance.

Note that the survey questions referenced in the diagram above aren’t purely hypothetical.  Instead, these types of questions have been asked frequently on nationally representative surveys.  For example, such questions are included in a nationally representative survey called the General Social Survey (GSS):