SWP 538 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Confounding, Census Of India, Convergent Validity

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Social Work
• Course: SWP 538
• Professor: Purnima George

Document Summary

Variables are fluid and sometimes difficult to define and measure. For example, researchers may come up with many different ways of defining verbal abuse, such as yelling, cursing, and belittling. How you choose to specifically define particular variables is called conceptualizing variables, and how you measure a concept (variable) is called operationalizing vari- ables. Conceptualizing a variable refers to how we translate an idea or abstract theory into a variable that can be used to test a hypothesis or make sense of observations. Therefore, conceptualizing a variable is another way of saying how experts are defining a concept. In research, it boils down to how we measure our variables or choose to operationalize them. How you operationalize a variable may depend on the information you want to collect and how you collect it. Variables are fluid and that the meaning attached to a variable can differ from person to person.