Exam 5: Conceptualization, Operationalization, and Measurement

Changing definitions almost inevitably results in different descriptive conclusions.

Which of the following sequences illustrates the progression of measurement steps in a fully structured scientific study?

Professor Tyler wrote a proposal to study the impact of authoritarianism on child rearing practices. She began her research by reviewing the meaning of authoritarianism. Based on this review, she formulated her own definition of authoritarianism. This process illustrates:

Measuring how people feel about proposed income tax hikes when you really want to know how well informed they are on the proposal is a problem of operationalization concerning:

Professor Spence decided to define socioeconomic status as a combination of income and education. Spence then determined the questions to be asked in a survey and the categories of responses. Spence was assigning socioeconomic status:

A survey question asking voters which political party they are affiliated with (Democrat, Republican, Independent)would be considered:

A nominal definition:

Definitions are more problematic for descriptive research than for explanatory research.

Verifying the validity of a measurement using an outside source of information, such as SAT scores or GPA, when examining a measure of academic performance is using:

Professor Tilton measured the variable "feelings toward drafting women" with the categories strongly agree, agree, indifferent, disagree, and strongly disagree. Professor Tilton was using the _____ level of measurement.

Number of arrests would be an example of an interval measurement.

Conceptualization is the development of research procedures that will result in empirical observations representing those concepts in the real world.

Precise measurement is more important than accurate measurement.

The specification of concepts in scientific inquiry depends on:

A level of measurement describing a variable whose attributes are rank-ordered and have equal distances between adjacent attributes are _____ measures.

The variable "educational level" of students was measured as last year in the school was completed (i.e., by using attributes such as none, 1st, 2nd, 3rd grades)This type of measurement falls under _____ measures.

One only needs a nominal definition of a concept before beginning the process of data collection.

Professor Miller argues that there are three dimensions to the quality of a relationship (belonging/affirmation, interdependence, and intimacy). Miller designed an instrument to measure the quality of a relationship. She notices that no items in the instrument tap the intimacy dimension. Her measure lacks:

Hudson et al. developed a series of questions to examine sexual attitude scale (SAS). The SAS scores of religious fundamentalists-a group believed to be conservative regarding sexual expression-were compared with the scores of social work graduate students-a group believed to be liberal regarding sexual expression. The researchers were examining the instrument's:

A researcher entering gender data collected from a mailed survey is working with: