SOCB05H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Face Validity, German Shepherd, Operationalization
Document Summary
Previously, it was said that in social sciences, we"re not studying people but instead we"re studying variables. Concept is a mental representation of a particular phenomenon that you wish to study and sometimes concepts are real as in they are directly observable. ie. a chair. There are other concepts that we can"t directly see so because of that we need to agree upon what they mean. These ones are more referred to as constructs. We need to construct them together in order to understand what they mean. Examples of construct, which are just a branch of a concept: truth, beauty, prejudice, violence (arguable), etc. Things we need to recognize are socially constructed. In research proposal, you"ll have concepts and/or constructs and you"ll need to tell the prof what they mean. If they"re in anyway ambiguous or abstract, then the prof needs to know how you"re conceptualizing them and how they"ll be used in your study.
