Exam 4: Section 1: Concepts, Operationalization, and Measurement

A specifiable aspect of a given concept is referred to as an ____.

Two observers watch the same child on the playground and rate the amount of aggression shown by the child using a standardized instrument. Comparison of the observers' scores will measure ____.

A researcher is developing a measure of the impact of living in high-crime neighborhoods and, in assessing its reliability administers it to the same people on two occasions several weeks apart. The researcher is assessing ____ reliability.

A conceptual definition ____.

_______________ validity refers to whether a measure accurately reflects the common agreements on concepts.

An _______________ measure combines multiple indicators to yield a single measure.

The words or symbols in language used to illustrate subjective thoughts or mental images about things we may encounter in daily life are known as ____.

What level of measurement allows you to arrange attributes from greater than to less than, but does not allow you to tell how much greater or how much less than one attribute is from another?

A researcher wants to measure attitudes towards gun control by asking people whether they would be worried about traveling to areas where there are known to be a lot of illegal guns. Critics argue that the conceptualization does not really look as though it is related to attitudes about gun control, in other words, that it lacks ____ validity.

Crimes must, at a minimum, have an offender, because without an offender there is no crime.

Compare and contrast UCR and NCVS with respect to the type of crime data they collect and how they collect it. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of each.

Identify the four levels of measurement and give an example of each.

Loeber's "dynamic classification of offenders" is a typology.

Concepts are _____.

A definition that says exactly how a concept will be measured is an _______________ definition.

The primary difference between the interval and the ratio level of variables is that ____.

Which levels of measurement allow for attributes to be placed on a continuum with equal distance between points?

An _______________ is produced by the intersection of two or more variables to create a set of categories.

To have scientific utility, a variable should be ____.

Define and discuss test-retest and interrater reliability.