Hypotheses, concepts, indicators, and measurement
are concepts often explored in social and political science. Concepts such as
‘aggression’ and ‘happiness’ are common to psychologists. In business studies, researchers might encounter such abstract ideas as ‘efficiency’, workplace ‘morale’, and ‘re-skilling’. Hypotheses contain concepts that are the product of our reflections on the world.
Concepts are extremely useful in helping us to communicate succinctly. We can talk about the importance of social class in influencing our life-chances, for example, in terms of:
• the sorts of schools we are able to send our children to;
• the type of qualifications they might achieve;
• their chances of finding work;
• the type of employment they enter;
• the types of social circles we mix in;
• the goods and services we consume;
• and so on.
Of course, we will all have slightly different ways in which we understand social class, but using this concept enables researchers to communicate with each other, particularly with colleagues in the same profession.
But concepts need clarification if they are to be used effectively in research. They must be defined in terms of how they relate to a particular study. The general process for doing this is as follows.
Conceptual definitions
The first step is to define what we mean by any particular concept. Once that has been done, it will then be possible to develop indicators for that concept as it has been defined.
A useful starting point is to look at the range of definitions of the concept that other researchers have used to tackle the problem. De Vaus (1996, p.50) discusses religiousness, and notes that some conceptualisations may regard it as about belief, and others about behaviour. Any set of beliefs that provides people with meaning in life may be defined as religious. What about those people who do not attend any religious services but who have a deep personal spiritual belief? Does belief have to include some notion of a supernatural being? At some point you have actually to decide on a single conceptual definition that encompasses the nature of your research.
Delineate the dimensions of the concept
For many concepts, there will be different dimensions that it may be useful to distinguish in your research. Poverty, for instance, may be conceptualised in economicterms, perhaps using income (or rather the lack of it!) to assess its existence or not. But it may also be thought of as having a socialdimension (such as living in a high-crime area), or an environmentaldimension (perhaps the levels of noise or
traffic pollution in an area). Determining these different dimensions, distinguishing between them, and then devising relevant questions to ask about them are likely to assist you greatly in conducting your research project:
Distinguishing between dimensions can lead to more sophisticated theorising and more useful analysis. (De Vaus 1996, p.50)
Defining concepts in practice
Seeman (cited in Frankfort-Nachmias and Nachmias 1996, p.32) developed a conceptualisation of alienation that delineated five different dimensions:
1. Powerlessness– the expectation of individuals that their behaviour cannot bring about or influence the outcomes they desire.
2. Meaningless – the perception by individuals that they do not understand decisions made by others or events taking place around them.
3. Normlessness– the expectation that socially unacceptable behaviour (cheating) is now required to achieve certain goals.
4. Isolation – the feeling of separateness that comes from rejecting socially approved values and goals.
5. Self-estrangement – the denial of the image of the ‘self’ as defined by the immediate group or the society at large.
From conceptual definition to operational definition
Once you have been able to specify the different dimensions of your concepts, you will be at the point where you can move from the abstract to the concrete. The operationalisation of concepts refers to the process through which indicators are developed to measure your concepts – that is, to transform them into observable phenomena.
From each of his five dimensions of alienation, Seeman developed a set of questions that were used to operationalise each one. For example, the following were used to operationalise ‘powerlessness’:
• ‘Suppose your town was considering a regulation that you believed to be very unjust or harmful. What do you think you could do?’ [People who responded that they could do nothing were categorised as powerless.]
• ‘If you made an effort to change this regulation how likely do you think you would succeed?’
• ‘If such a case arose how likely is it that you would actually do something about it’?
• ‘Would you ever try to influence a local decision?’
Although alienation can never be empirically observed, the questionnaire items serve as indicators through which it can be inferred.
De Vaus (1996, pp.47–8) provides a useful overview of what the process entails.
He asks, ‘if we are interested in testing the hypothesis that religiousness is a
response to deprivation, where might we begin?’ The proposed relationship is a positive one, where an increase in deprivation (the independent variable) causes people to be more religious (dependent variable). To test the research hypothesis we must work out who is religious and who is not, and classify people according to whether or not they are ‘deprived’. Income might be used to determine who is deprived and who is not: those earning less than £6,000 a year could be classified as deprived and those earning £6,000 and more could be classified as non-deprived.
Church attendance might be used to denote religiousness, with monthly or more frequent attendees being identified as religious and all others as non-religious.
How many indicators to use?
Typically, concepts are complex and are best measured with a number of indicators to encompass their full scope. There is often a need to establish multiple indicators to infer the existence or not of a particular concept.
For instance, religiousness cannot be measured simply by asking how often people attend religious services. This is just one way in which a person’s commitment to their religion could be expressed. The single indicator of church attendance does not address the many other aspects of ‘religiousness’, for example:
• observance of religious festivals;
• having a good knowledge about one’s faith;
• how often a person prays;
• whether someone believes in life after death;
• whether one adheres to the central tenets of the faith.
If we only ask one question then we run the risk of only discovering one facet of the phenomena under investigation. There may be many highly religious people who for a variety of reasons do not attend religious services.
Activity 3.2 Operationalisation of concepts
Take the research problem that you defined in Activity 3.1. Provide two examples of conceptual definitions that such a research area would lead you to examine, and for each, provide two operational definitions:
Concept 1:
Operational definition 1 Operational definition 2 Concept 2:
Operational definition 1 Operational definition 2