Sociology

Chapter 5 of Earl Babbie’s book, The Practice of Social Research, primarily expounds on Conceptualization, Operationalization, and Measurement.  This particular phase in the conduct of an empirical research must be done to be able to proceed to the data gathering phase.

There is a need for a research topic to be conceptualized in such a way that the unit of meaning for a particular social phenomenon is clearly defined.  This will put focus on the research topic and will guide the research process to follow.  The researcher can operationalize the definition of the concept based on how the concept is actually used in the study or research.  A concept is a social construct.  It is what is based on how people in society use it as part of living.  The concept of anomie, for instance, as introduced by the French Sociologist, Emile Durkheim in his study on suicide in the late eighteenth century was after all based on the word anomy used three centuries before Durkheim used it.  Anomie as used by Durkheim was conceptualized to mean “state of normlessness,” anomy meant disregard for divine law.

In the process of conceptualization, indicators can be used to measure the presence or absence of what is being sought for.  In conceptualizing pain, for instance, indicators such as facial grimace and pain rating can be used.  When there is a need to group concepts, dimension can be used, for instance, the experience and the effect dimension of pain.  These are just two dimensions of pain; there are still other possible dimensions a researcher can include.  The operationalization task, though, already delimits the research.

After conceptualization, there is a need to specify the levels of measurements for the variables used in the study.  In research, a variable is a characteristic about each individual element of a population or sample.  The value of the variable will be the measure of the characteristic of interest, like a patient’s age upon admission at the hospital, his/her religious affiliation, his/her blood pressure, and his/her verbalized pain scale.  The importance of knowing the level of measurement can not be overlooked as it will guide the researcher in the analysis phase of the research.  There is an appropriate statistical treatment for a specific level of measurement a variable is used in the research.

There are four levels of measurements: nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio.  Nominal measures are variables with characteristics of exhaustiveness and mutual exclusiveness; merely offer names or labels for characteristics, either the same or different.  For instance, for the variable gender or sex, data like 10 males and 15 females; for the variable religion, 15 Roman Catholic and 12 Protestants.  Ordinal measures are variables we can logically rank-order like people in society are either in the upper, middle or lower class. Interval measures provide numbers that reflect differences among items; the actual distance separating those attributes does have meaning, like Fahrenheit temperature scale of 80 – 90 degrees, IQ scores of 100 and 110.  Lastly, the ratio measures are the attributes composing a variable, besides having all the characteristics mentioned previously, are based on a true zero point.  Examples of ratio are age, length of residence in a given place.

Reliability of a research technique can be verified when each time it is used on the same subject or object, the results will be the same.  Hence, there is consistency of the technique, it is reliable.  Prior to the use of the research tool, a reliability test can be done.    Once reliability is set, validity can also be established, which refeThere is certain score which tells the researcher that the tool has high reliability and can be used now for data gathering.rs to how an empirical measure reflects the way the concept is defined for the research being conducted.  There is also face validity to contend with, since individuals vary in their perspectives on a certain concept, they may not necessarily agree on a common meaning.  The same goes with criterion-related validity and content validity.  These can also be considered at this phase.