SOCB05H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Robert Cornelius, Operationalization, Operational Definition
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Socb05 lecture 3 (chapter 4 cont"d & chapter 5) In social science research, the most typical units of analysis are individual people; but social artifacts, like books or movies, and groups, populations, and other aggregated are often studied as well. If a researcher is interested in exploring, describing, or explaining how different groups of individuals behave as individuals, the unit of analysis is the individual, not the group. This is so even though the researcher then proceeds to generalize about aggregates of individuals, as in saying that more women than men favor gender equality. Think of it this way: having an attitude about gender equality is something that can be an attribute only of an individual, not a group; that is there is no one group mind that can have an attitude. So even when we generalize about women, we"re generalizing about an attribute they possess as individuals.
