POLS 210 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Perfect Sense, Operational Definition, Skewness
19 Sep 2018
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The operational definition of a concept provides a blueprint for its measurement. Variables provide the raw materials for describing and analyzing the social and political world. A variable is an empirical measurement of a characteristic. Example: if we measure marital status among a group of adults by asking each respondent to choose the category that describes him or her: married, widowed, divorced, separated, or never married. These 5 categories are the values of the variable, marital status. A person who responds married is measured as having a different value on the variable than someone who says divorced. Another example: when an application form requests age:____, it is asking for a value of the variable, age. Someone who writes 20 has a value on the variable that is 9 measurement units (years) younger than someone who writes 29. Every variable has one name and at least 2 values. In computer anal(cid:455)sis, a (cid:448)a(cid:396)ia(cid:271)le"s (cid:448)alues (cid:373)ust (cid:271)e (cid:272)oded (cid:374)u(cid:373)e(cid:396)i(cid:272)all(cid:455).
