SOC 481 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Operationalization

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 481
• Professor: Andie Noak

Document Summary

The research process: select topic, focus question, design study, collect data, analyze data, interpret data, inform others. What are the characteristics of these people. What are the different ways these people do this. The survey research process (the stages of a survey: overall survey design and preliminary planning, questionnaire design & pre-testing, final survey design and planning, sample selection and data collection, data coding, data file construction, analysis, and final report. Questionnaire design: start with a topic, develop a research question, define the key concepts that are part of your research question, develop one of more survey questions (indicators) to measure each concept. Complex concepts are often divided into several dimensions. The process of translating between an abstract concept or dimension and observable and measurable actions or things. Taking a theatrical concept and making it observable/measurable is called operationalization. Each observable/measurable thing that operationalizes a concept is called an indicator.