SOCL 2211 Chapter : Conception And Measurement
Document Summary
We begin by confronting the hidden concern people sometimes have about whether it"s truly possible to measure the stuff of life: love, hate, prejudice, religiosity, radicalism, alienation. Once that point is established, we can look at the steps involved in actual measurement. One of the two pillars of science is observation. Most of the variables we want to study do not actually exist in the way that rocks exist. Moreover, they seldom have a single, unambiguous meaning. Suppose we want to study political party affiliation. To measure this variable, we might consult the list of registered voters to note whether the people we were studying were registered at democrats or republicans and take that as a measure of their party affiliation. But we could also simply ask someone what party they identify with and take their response as out measure. These two different measurement possibilities reflect somewhat different definitions of political party affiliation.
