Deck 5: Concepts Operationalization and Measurement

Question 1

It is always a good idea to make more than one measurement of any subtle or complex social concept, which is known as the

A) test-retest method
B) inter-rater reliability
C) split-half method
D) face validity

Answer 1

split-half method

Question 2

Criterion-related validity refers to

A) a comparison of measures to some external criterion
B) an empirical measure that may or may not agree with our common understanding of a particular concept
C) the degree to which a measure covers the range of meanings included within the concepts
D) the basis of logical relationships among variables

Answer 2

a comparison of measures to some external criterion

Question 3

A researcher concerned with whether a particular measurement technique will, after repeated measures, yield the same results is concerned with

A) accuracy
B) reliability
C) precise measurement
D) validity

Answer 3

reliability

Question 4

Age of an offender is an example of which level of measurement?

A) interval
B) nominal
C) ratio
D) ordinal

Question 5

R ecidivism is a term to represent a collection of unrelated phenomena that we have either observed or heard about somewhere.

Question 6

Reliability is measuring what you think you are measuring.

Question 7

Every variable should have two important qualities; their attributes should be exhaustive as well as mutually exclusive.

Question 8

Mental images of serious crime may vary among individuals depending on their backgrounds and experiences.

Question 9

Ratio measures are the highest level, followed by

A) interval, nominal and ordinal
B) nominal, interval, ordinal
C) interval, ordinal, and nominal
D) ordinal, nominal, interval

Question 10

Conceptualization is the process by which we specify precisely what we mean when we use particular terms.

Question 11

An empirical measure that adequately reflects the meaning of the concept under consideration is known as

A) reliability
B) validity
C) accuracy
D) face validity

Question 12

Sometimes it is necessary to make the same measurement more than once, which is known as the

A) test-retest method
B) inter-rater reliability
C) split-half method
D) face validity

Question 13

Content validity refers to

A) a comparison of measures to some external criterion
B) an empirical measure that may or may not agree with our common understanding of a particular concept
C) the degree to which a measure covers the range of meanings included within the concepts
D) the basis of logical relationships among variables

Question 14

Recidivism represents a collection of related phenomena either observed or heard about.

Question 15

Ordinal measures are variables whose attributes may be logically rank-ordered.

Question 16

A lower-level measure cannot be converted to a higher-level one.

Question 17

According to Abraham Kaplan's (1964) discussion, which of the following are not included in the three classes of things that a researcher measures?

A) direct observables
B) indirect observables
C) constructs
D) discrete observables

Question 18

Reliability is threatened every time there is a single observer as the source of data.

Question 19

Particular empirical measures that may or may not agree with common understandings of our individual mental images about a specific concept are known as

A) reliability
B) validity
C) accuracy
D) face validity

Question 20

One good indicator of crime seriousness is harm to the crime victim.

Question 21

The process of developing operational definitions is known as

A) conceptualization
B) proprietary means
C) reification
D) operationalization

Question 22

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

A) interval is rarely used
B) with ratio there is an absolute meaning of zero
C) with interval there is an absolute meaning of zero
D) none of the above

Question 23

Operationalization involves

A) describing how actual measurements will be made
B) adding up the sum of the parts to determine the whole
C) removing negative correlations from variables
D) making the necessary measurements

Question 24

A specifiable aspect of a given concept is referred to as a

A) dimension
B) concept
C) construct
D) direct observable

Question 25

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

A) operations
B) concepts
C) observations
D) measurements

Question 26

Logical sets of attributes are known as

A) values
B) variables
C) concepts
D) operational definitions

Question 27

The specification of conceptual definitions serves as a specific working definition and also

A) focuses observational strategy
B) focuses research on the task at hand
C) focuses readers on the core issue
D) focuses on fixing the problem

Question 28

Researchers must be able to classify every observation in terms of one and only one attribute. Which of the following terms best describes this concept?

A) reliability
B) validity
C) mutual exclusiveness
D) exhaustiveness

Question 29

Professor Smith is studying attitudes toward gun control and plans to assess support for firearms registration by determining whether or not her research subjects say they would travel to countries where the possession of unlicensed guns is legal. Her critics argue that this measure lacks

A) face validity
B) construct validity
C) convergent validity
D) criterion-related validity

Question 30

The number of counts on an indictment is what level of measurement?

A) nominal
B) ordinal
C) interval
D) ratio

Question 31

The penalties that are assigned to different crimes by law are best characterized as a dimension of

A) public opinion
B) crime seriousness
C) retribution
D) cultural tastes

Question 32

Ranks in the local police department represent what level of measurement?

A) nominal
B) ordinal
C) interval
D) ratio

Question 33

The test-retest method is used to examine

A) reliability
B) validity
C) generalizability
D) precision

Question 34

What two qualities should every variable possess?

A) meaning and value
B) exhaustive and thorough
C) exhaustive and mutually exclusive
D) operational definition and meaning

Question 35

Measures of jail capacity were operationalized as whether or not there were more inmates housed at the end of the year than the original building design called for. This would be an example of what level of measurement?

A) nominal
B) ordinal
C) interval
D) ratio

Question 36

Which of the following is representative of the dimension "victim harm"?

A) economic gain
B) gender of victim
C) physical injury
D) location of injury

Question 37

Which of the following sequences illustrates the progression of measurement steps?

A) conceptual definition, conceptualization, operational definition, and real-world measurement
B) operational definition, conceptualization, conceptual definition, and real-world measurement
C) operational definition, conceptual definition, conceptualization, and real-world measurement
D) conceptualization, conceptual definition, operational definition, and real-world measurement

Question 38

Although a person's observations and experiences are real, his or her concepts are

A) mental creations
B) subliminal
C) discrete
D) reliable

Question 39

The assignment of grades by the professor to major research papers is an example of

A) measurement
B) operationalization
C) conceptualization
D) validity

Question 40

The production report generated at the city police department contains the number of arrests made by each officer on a monthly basis. What level of measurement would number of arrests be?

A) nominal
B) ordinal
C) interval
D) ratio

Question 41

When the actual distance that separates the attributes composing some variables does have meaning, the variables are described as

A) interval
B) nominal
C) ordinal
D) none of the above

Question 42

In general, whenever researchers are concerned that measures obtained through coding may not be classified reliably, they should

A) have each measure independently coded by different people
B) not obtain measures through coding
C) perform split-half method test
D) perform an interrater reliability test

Question 43

What type of variable 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) nominal
B) ordinal
C) interval
D) ratio

Question 44

Which of the following best represents the abstract "reliability"?

A) a measure adequately reflects the meaning of the concept
B) a measure does not adequately reflect the underling concept
C) the measure is stable
D) the measure is unstable

Question 45

Validity that is related to the logical relationships between variables is known as

A) criterion-related validity
B) face validity
C) convergent validity
D) construct validity

Question 46

A definition that spells out exactly how we plan to measure a variable is known as

A) operational definition
B) measurement
C) concept
D) conceptualization

Question 47

Validating an individual measure to compare it with alternative measures of the same concept is known as

A) content validity
B) multiple measures
C) construct validity
D) criterion-related validity

Question 48

What is the main distinction between measurement and operationalization?

A) measurement involves actually making observations and assigning scores to those observations
B) operationalization involves actually making observations and assigning scores to those observations
C) the operationalization process starts much earlier, usually with conceptualization
D) there is not a difference between the terms

Question 49

An example of direct observables is

A) individual values
B) are mandatory sentences fair?
C) the words in a crime report
D) all of the above

Question 50

When a supervisor for a survey contacts a subset of the respondents to verify certain information, it is an example of

A) lack of generalizability
B) interrater reliability
C) split-half method
D) construct validity

Question 51

A person's height as a measure of a person's IQ would be seen as having what problem?

A) precision
B) reliability
C) accuracy
D) validity

Question 52

A questionnaire contained the item "social class" with responses of lower class, lower middle class, middle class, upper middle class, upper class. The researcher asks respondents to check the one that describes them. The researcher is using this question to measure

A) direct observables
B) indirect observables
C) constructs
D) nominal variables

Question 53

Many criminal justice measures are imprecise, so reporting approximate values is

A) often necessary
B) often preferable
C) undesirable
D) unacceptable

Question 54

Numerous studies have shown that measures of crime based on police records often suffer from

A) reliability problems
B) validity problems
C) accounting problems
D) typology problems

Question 55

The key standards for measurement quality are

A) mutual exclusivity and exhaustibility
B) reliability and validity
C) pattern and repetition
D) duplicity and veracity

Question 56

Which of the following variables allows for attributes to be placed on a continuum with equal distance between points?

A) nominal and ordinal
B) ordinal and interval
C) interval and ratio
D) all of the above

Question 57

Because low marital adjustment should lead to divorce, Professor Quinn checked his measure of marital adjustment by examining whether couples with low martial-adjustment scores later obtained divorces. This illustrates the use of

A) criterion-related validity
B) face validity
C) content validity
D) construct validity

Question 58

Professor Jenkins is interested in attitudes toward the trying juveniles as adults and plans to assess support for this hypothesis by asking whether or not subjects say they would travel to countries that allow juveniles to stand trial as an adult. Critics would say this measure lacks

A) face validity
B) criterion-related validity
C) content validity
D) construct validity

Question 59

Composite measures are frequently used in criminal justice research for all of the following reasons except.

A) In some cases, the researcher is unable to develop single indicators of complex concepts.
B) The researcher may desire to use a rather refined ordinal measure of a variable, arranging cases in several ordinal categories from very low to very high on a variable.
C) Indexes and scales are efficient devices for data analysis.
D) The researcher is seeking a method for measuring disorder and composite measures are the only allowable measure.

Question 60

The study of food-buying habits where researchers were interested in learning whether people who drank wine ate healthier foods than people who drank beer is a good example of

A) research exhaustiveness
B) face validity
C) interrater reliability
D) split-half method

Question 61

Which of the following statements is not correct?

A) a measure is valid if it truly measures the underlying concept
B) a measure is reliable if it is observable over time
C) a measure is reliable if it is constant
D) both validity and reliability are important in a measure

Question 62

Words are symbols in language that we use to represent mental images are known as  __________ .

Question 63

If we consider the theft of $20 from a poor person to be more serious than the theft of $2,000 from a wealthy CEO of an oil company, victim wealth, in this case, could be considered a(n)

A) influencing attribute
B) mitigating circumstance
C) dimension
D) indicator

Question 64

__________  is the process by which we specify precisely what we mean when we use a particular term.

Question 65

With respect to levels of measurement, which of the following is not correct?

A) a variable measured at the ratio level can also be measured at the ordinal level
B) a variable measured at the interval level can also be measured at the nominal level
C) a variable measured at the ordinal level can also be measured at the interval level
D) a variable measured at the ordinal level can also be measured at the nominal level

Question 66

The process of regarding as real things that are not is called  __________.

Question 67

The  __________ method lays the groundwork for a check on reliability in regard to making multiple measures of the same complex concept.

Question 68

Reliability does not ensure  __________ any more than precision ensures it.

Question 69

__________  is a matter of whether a particular measurement technique, applied repeatedly to the same object, will yield the same result each time.

Question 70

A definition that spells out precisely how the concept will be measured is known as  __________ .

Question 71

Specifying the different  __________  of a concept often paves the way for a more sophisticated understanding of what we are studying.

Question 72

If a researcher is concerned with combining variables to result in a different composite measure, the researcher is using what technique?

A) typology
B) validity
C) operationalization
D) reliability

Question 73

Which of the following is an attribute of the variable "employment status"?

A) unemployed
B) minimum wage
C) number of employees
D) all the above

Question 74

The conceptualization and operationalization processes can be seen as the specification of variables and the  __________  composing them.

Question 75

Which of the following represents problems for reliability?

A) any time you have a single observer as the source of data
B) use of different interviewers during the course of a research project
C) there are different coders used to evaluate the data
D) all of the above

Question 76

Measurement is difficult and __________, therefore researchers try to describe the measurement process explicitly.

Question 77

In research, the process of regarding something as real (such as crime seriousness) when it is not is called

A) reification
B) validity
C) typology
D) reliability

Question 78

Variables whose attributes have only the characteristics of exhaustiveness and mutual exclusiveness are  __________ measures.

Question 79

A researcher has measured fear of crime by asking the subjects whether or not they were afraid of crime and by asking them to rate from 1 to 10 their own fear of crime. Which is the highest level of measurement that is illustrated by this example?

A) nominal
B) ordinal
C) interval
D) ratio

Question 80

The design and execution of criminal justice research requires eliminating the confusion over concepts and reality. To accomplish this, scientists have found it useful to distinguish three kinds of definitions: real, conceptual, and

A) apparent
B) operational
C) congruent
D) altruistic