POL SCI 3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Operational Definition, Egocentrism, Content Analysis
Document Summary
Even more likely to litter if there"s a lot of litter on the floor: example: hotel towel reuse studies, conditions: different reuse towel? papers, dependent: whether or not people reused their towels. Overt: covert means the subjects you are studying does not know they are being studied, overt means that they do know they are being studies. Reactivity internal validity problem; the subjects are altering their behavior because they know they are being observed. Hawthorne effect when people are being studied, they tend to feel good about being studied. Any kind of dependent variable that is affected by feeling good is affected. Indirect: direct real time, indirect never see the behavior. You infer it after the fact through trace evidence. They often don"t catch the suspect in the act. Structured vs. unstructured: structured an operational definition exists. You know what you"re looking for: unstructured you don"t know what you"re looking for.
