POL 2156 Lecture 4: Lecture 4 - Concept Variables

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POL 2156
• Professor: Stephanie Mullen

Document Summary

Our conceptual definitions need to be clear. Important to have consistent understandings between researchers of the concepts under study (this doesn"t happen all the time, so be aware of it!!) Even what may appear to be self-evident concepts (voting) may not be as conceptually clear to others. In order to make generalizations about the concepts, it is important that the variables are an accurate reflection of the concepts. Understand how we move from variables to indicators (from definitions to survey question step 3 to 4) Levels of measure (3 different groups for writing survey questions) Take your variables that are testable and find questions on the survey that are appropriate to measure the variables. Most of the time there will be several indicators but for your project there should be one indicator/question on the survey for each variable. If you are doing a survey or interview for a project you will state that your indicator is.