Research Operationalization

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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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Conceptualization and operationalization

From any particular topic X, keep two questions in mind:

"What is meant by X in this research?"

"How was X measured?"

The first one is conceptual definitionThe second one is operational definition

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EXAMPLE 1.

CONCEPTUAL DEFINITION - Length of table is the distance from one end to the other.

OPERATIONAL DEFINITION - Place a yardstick along one edge of the table, place additional yardsticks end to end until one extends over the other edge. Read the numeric marking for inches on the final yardstick at the point where it is exactly over the other edge of the table (call this X inches). Count the number of yardsticks you have used (call this N). Compute (N-1) * 36 + X. Repeat this process on the edge perpendicular to this one. The length of the table in inches is the larger of these two numbers.

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EXAMPLE 2.

CONCEPTUAL DEFINITION - Age- the number of years that have passed since a person's date of birth.

OPERATIONAL DEFINITION - A. Ask an individual for his name, place of birth (county and state), and names of both parents. Go to the county records office for the given county and find the record for the person with the given name. If there are more than one such records, check for names of parents. Identify the date of birth from this record. Subtract the year of birth from 1998. If the month and day of birth has not yet been reached in the current year, subtract 1.

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Let’s see your conceptual definitions

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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 questionnaires19/04/23 71

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

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Research Process Define Problem, Research Objectives

HOW?

Overall Method•Survey•Experiment•Case Study•Secondary Data

What?

•Concepts

•Variables

•Measures

Who?

•Population

•Sampling

Data Gathering

Analysis

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Developing the conceptual framework

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What inputs go into developing a conceptual framework?

• Experiential knowledge of student and supervisor:

– Technical knowledge.– Research background.– Personal experience.– Data (particularly for qualitative).

• Literature review:

– Prior ‘related’ theory – concepts and relationships that are used to represent the world, what is happening and why.

– Prior ‘related’ research – how people have tackled ‘similar’ problems and what they have learned.

– Other theory and research - approaches, lines of investigation and theory that are not obviously relevant/previously used.

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How might a conceptual framework be developed?

• The pieces of the conceptual framework are borrowed but the researcher provides the structure. To develop the structure you could:

– Identify the key words used in the subject area of your study.

– Draw out the key things within something you have already written about the subject area – literature review.

– Take one key concept, idea or term at a time and brainstorm all the other things that might be related and then go back and select those that seem most relevant.

• Whichever is used it will take time and a number of iterations and the focus is both on the content and the inter-relationships.

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Examples of relationship

X Y X Z

X Y Z

X Y X Y

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Operationalization

• Conceptual definition• Conceptual framework• Operational definition• Measurement• Population and samples• Data need• Questionnaire design• Pretest and revision• Survey

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