POLI 3000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Theoretical Definition, Flowchart, Operationalization
22 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Clarify
operationalization
Measure via instrument
I. Measurement
a. Operationalization
i. Need to try and make the broad concepts into concrete ways to measure
something
ii. Want to do this as systematically as possible
b. Have to ask what the unit of analysis is
i. People
1. Individual-level
a. Person/voter/legislator
2. Aggregate-level: Americans/classrooms
ii. Other sorts of units
1. Events (wars/elections)
2. Miscellaneous (treaties/judicial rulings)
iii. Want to avoid ecological fallacy: using aggregate level data to generalize to
individuals
c. Measurement is very important
i. Need to make sure you have good measures
ii. If you have a bad measure, everything after that is suspect
iii. Measurement is not neutral
1. What you choose to focus on, when you try operationalize.. you will
make choices that will influence your outcomes
2. The choices in what you measure and how you measure it has a direct
impact on the types of results you find
iv. Almost never one way to measure a concept
d. Basic measurement model
i. Construct-→ measure--- error
ii. Construct: your idea (fairness)
1. Good measurement: reflect the construct as much as possible, and
reduce the error as much as possible
2. The more accurate the construct is, the more open you are to error you
are.
e. Flow chart
i. Hypothesis→ concept---→ conceptual definition-→ operational definition-→
variable-→ measure
II. Flow chart
a. Democracy example: conceptual definition has a lot of options
i. Could be about elections, peaceful transfer of power, constraints on leaders,
equality of votes, etc
ii. There is o right oe
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