Operationalization

276: 393:. The researcher asks if the evidence is sufficient to "support" the working hypothesis. Formal operationalization would specify the kinds of evidence needed to support the hypothesis as well as evidence which would "fail" to support it. Robert Yin recommends developing a case study protocol as a way to specify the kinds of evidence needed during the data collection phases. He identifies six sources of evidence: documentation; archival records; 219:, struggling with the methodological and epistemological problems of defining measurement of psychological phenomena, found a solution in reformulating psychological concepts operationally, as it had been proposed in the field of physics by Bridgman, their Harvard colleague. This resulted in a series of articles that were published by Stevens and McGregor from 1935, that were widely discussed in the field of psychology and led to the 31: 359:

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 linked to a conceptual framework.

420:). They explain and illustrate how each of these conceptual frameworks can be operationalized. They also show how to make conceptualization and operationalization more concrete by demonstrating how to form conceptual framework tables that are tied to the literature and operationalization tables that lay out the specifics of how to operationalize the conceptual framework (measure the concepts). 267:

scientific measurements and realizing that they both described a single theoretical concept. Einstein's disagreement with the operationalist approach was criticized by Bridgman as follows: "Einstein did not carry over into his general relativity theory the lessons and insights he himself has taught us in his special theory." (p. 335).

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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.

102:. As another example, in visual processing the presence of a certain object in the environment could be inferred by measuring specific features of the light it reflects. In these examples, the phenomena are difficult to directly observe and measure because they are general/abstract (as in the example of health) or they are 307:

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

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Sometimes multiple or competing alternative operationalizations for the same phenomenon are available. Repeating the analysis with one operationalization after the other can determine whether the results are affected by different operationalizations. This is called checking robustness. If the results

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the measuring operation used. So the criticism is that there are potentially infinite concepts, each defined by the methods that measured it, such as angle of sighting, day of the solar year, angular subtense of the moon, etc. which were gathered together, some astronomical observations taken over a

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a concept like "duration" can split into multiple different concepts. In refining a physical theory, it may be discovered that what was thought to be one concept is actually two or more distinct concepts. Bridgman proposed that if only operationally defined concepts are used, this will never happen.

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process. An example is the empirical research question of if job satisfaction influences 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

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concepts that had dominated earlier psychological theory and to replace them with a more operationally meaningful account of human behavior. But, as in economics, the supporters ultimately ended up "turning operationalism inside out". "Instead of replacing 'metaphysical' terms such as 'desire' and

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that the two operations would always produce the same result because they were equivalent at a deep level, and work out the implications of that assumption, which is the General Theory of Relativity. Thus, a breakthrough in science was achieved by disregarding different operational definitions of

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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,

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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 a uniform measure. Some might respond verbally while others might respond

325:'purpose'" they "used it to legitimize them by giving them operational definitions." Thus in psychology, as in economics, the initial, quite radical operationalist ideas eventually came to serve as little more than a "reassurance fetish" for mainstream methodological practice." 373:

to the set of questionnaire items that form a job satisfaction scale is operationalization. For example, it is possible to measure job satisfaction using only two simple questions: "All in all, I am satisfied with my job", and, "In general, I like my job."

347:, 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 295:. Particular concerns about operationalization arise in cases that deal with complex concepts and complex stimuli (e.g., business research, software engineering) where unique threats to validity of operationalization are believed to exist. 599:

Lukyanenko, Roman; Evermann, Joerg; Parsons, Jeffrey (2014). "Instantiation Validity in IS Design Research". In Tremblay, Monica Chiarini; VanderMeer, Debra E.; Rothenberger, Marcus A.; Gupta, Ashish; Yoon, Victoria Y. (eds.).

262:, defined by putting the object on a scale or balance. Previously, no one had paid any attention to the different operations used because they always produced the same results, but the key insight of Einstein was to posit the 389:. Working hypotheses (particularly in the social and administrative sciences), however, are tested through evidence collection and the assessment of the evidence. The evidence is generally collected within the context of a 106:(as in the example of the object). Operationalization helps infer the existence, and some elements of the extension, of the phenomena of interest by means of some observable and measurable effects they have. 466:

Inguane, R., Gallego-Ayala, J., & Juízo, D. (2013). Decentralized water resources management in Mozambique: challenges of implementation at river basin level. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts

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An operationalization diagram, used to illustrate obscure or ambiguous concepts in an academic paper. This particular example is tailored to use in the field of Political Science.

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Atmanspacher, H. (1994). Is the ontic/epistemic distinction sufficient to describe quantum systems exhaustively?. In Symposium on the Foundations of Modern Physics (pp. 15-32).

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The concept of operationalization was first presented by the British physicist N. R. Campbell in his 'Physics: The Elements' (Cambridge, 1920). This concept spread to

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Advancing the Impact of Design Science: Moving from Theory to Practice - 9th International Conference, DESRIST 2014, Miami, FL, USA, May 22-24, 2014. Proceedings

683:. Stillwater, OK: New Forums Press. For a detailed discussion of operationalization extending the example above see Shields & Rangarajan pp. 32 to 41. 476:

Wright, R. (2007). Statistical structures underlying quantum mechanics and social science. International Journal of Theoretical Physics, 46(8), 2026-2045.

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theme—was that all theoretical terms must be defined via the operations by which one measured them; see Crowther-Heyck, Hunter (2005),

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Downing, K. L. (1992). A qualitative teleological approach to cardiovascular physiology. Recent advances in qualitative physics, 329.

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One of the main critics of operationalism in social science argues that "the original goal was to eliminate the subjective

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is one way to connect (or frame) two concepts – job satisfaction and job turnover. The process of moving from the idea

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are defined through the operations by which we measure them. The practice originated in the field of physics with the

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Svozil, K. (1990). The quantum coin toss-testing microphysical undecidability. Physics Letters A, 143(9), 433-437.

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Bridgman's theory was criticized because "length" is measured in various ways (e.g. it is impossible to use a

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Martens, H., & de Muynck, W. M. (1990). The inaccuracy principle. Foundations of physics, 20(4), 357-380.

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Operationalization uses a different logic when testing a formal (quantitative) hypothesis and testing

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The importance of careful operationalization can perhaps be more clearly seen in the development of

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