Sociology 2206A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Theoretical Definition, Social Capital, Operationalization

• School: Western University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: Sociology 2206A/B
• Professor: Stephen Lin

Document Summary

Mental process of developing clear and precise meaning for abstract ideas or concepts: the thinking process . Conceptualization social mobility: ability of individuals/groups to move within a social hierarchy with changes in income, education, occupation, etc. Measurement assigning numbers/labels to units of analysis to represent conceptual properties. Two types of measures: directly observable things we can observe rather simply and directly (shape, length) Indirect observables things that require more subtle, complex, or indirect observations: requiring concrete indicators that help us to observe (ses) Quantitative measurements: seeks to bridge concepts & data, uses numeric nature of data, continuous vs. discrete variables, discrete variables that have a relatively fixed set of separate attributes (ex. Occupation, ethnicity, employment status: continuous variables that have an infinite number of values moving along a continuum (ex. Indices condense the data generated by multiple indicators into a single number/score: ex.