To Piotr Konieczny
How are you Piotr Konieczny? I’m sad that end of this class and final blog posting comes. First of all, thank you for giving us lecture cordially and with your full passion. Actually, I specialized in ‘Biology’ in other university and I transfer to this university so this was first semester to me. Thanks to your lecture, I could come to learn a lot about sociology. And on Teacher’s day, you shared your cake to all students in class. It may not a big deal to some people. But that was not just sharing cake. It was giving your considerate heart. It was impressive and I thanked. Summer is coming now. So please take care of your health:) And finally, here is my bolg posting begins.
most useful, interesting things and topic I learned
most useful, interesting things and topic I learned
Operationalization
In research design, especially in psychology, social sciences, life sciences, and physics, operationalization is a process of defining the measurement of a phenomenon that is not directly measurable, though its existence is indicated by other phenomena. It is the process of defining a fuzzy concept so as to make the theoretical concept clearly distinguishable or measurable, and to understand it in terms of empirical observations. In a wider sense, it refers to the process of specifying the extension of a concept describing what is and is not a part of that concept. For example, in medicine, the phenomenon of health might be operationalized by one or more indicators like body mass index or tobacco smoking. Thus, some phenomena are directly difficult to observe but their existence can be inferred by means of their observable effects.
In the social sciences - anger example
For example, a researcher may wish to measure the concept "anger." Its presence, and the depth of the emotion, cannot be directly measured by an outside observer because anger is intangible. Rather, other measures are used by outside observers, such as facial expression, choice of vocabulary, loudness and tone of voice.
If a researcher wants to measure the depth of "anger" in various persons, the most direct operation would be to ask them a question, such as "are you angry", or "how angry are you?". This operation is problematic, however, because it depends upon the definition of the individual. Some people might be subjected to a mild annoyance, and become slightly angry, but describe themselves as "extremely angry," whereas others might be subjected to a severe provocation, and become very angry, but describe themselves as "slightly angry." In addition, in many circumstances it is impractical to ask subjects whether they are angry.
Since one of the measures of anger is loudness, the researcher can operationalize the concept of anger by measuring how loudly the subject speaks compared to his normal tone. However, this must assume that loudness is uniform measure. Some might respond verbally while other might respond physically.
Operationalization as conceptual frameworks
The above discussion connects operationalization to measurement of concepts. Many scholars have worked to operationalize concepts like job satisfaction, prejudice, anger etc. Scale and index construction are forms of operationalization. There is not one perfect way to operationalize. For example, in the United States the concept distance driven would be operationalized as miles. Whereas, kilometers would be used in Europe and Asia.
Operationalization is part of the empirical research process. Take for example an empirical research question: Does job satisfaction influence job turnover? Both job satisfaction and job turnover need to be measured. The concepts and their relationship are important — operationalization occurs within a larger framework of concepts. When there is a large empirical research question or purpose the conceptual framework that organizes the response to the question must be operationalized before the data collection can begin. If a scholar constructs a questionnaire based on a conceptual framework, they have operationalized the framework. Most serious empirical research should involve operationalization that is transparent and connected to a conceptual framework.
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