How to measure social reality? Cheat Sheet (DRAFT) by faminconnue

social research relates to the measur­ements of concepts -> concepts do not exist in reality but are rather mental images of social phenomena

concep­tua­liz­ation: specifying what we mean when we use a particular term, or concept, by describing the indicators we use to measure (observe) concepts

→ indicators:obser­vation that we choose to consider as a reflection of a variable we wish to study

operat­ion­ali­zation: the develo­pment of specific research procedures (opera­tions) that will result in empirical observ­ations repres­enting those concepts in the real world
→ it is an extension of concep­tua­lis­ation that specified the exact procedures that will be used for measuring the attrib­utesof variables

levels of measur­ements:
- nominal
- ordinal
- interval
- ratio

criteria of measur­ements:
precis­eness

accuracy

reliab­ility: quality of measur­ements methods that suggests that the same data would have been collected each time in repeated observ­ation of the same phenomenon
→ quanti­tative performs better than qualit­ative research

validity: term describing a measure that accurately reflects the concept it is intended to measure
→ types:
- face validity: the quality of an indicator that makes it seem to be reasonable measure of some variable
- criter­ion­-re­lat­ed/­pre­dictive validity: the degree to which a measure relates to some external criterion
- construct validity: the degree to which a measure relates to other variables as expected within a system of theore­tical relati­onships
- content validity: refers to how much
a measure covers the range of meanings included within a concept

→ qualit­ative performs better than quanti­tative research