POL SCI 3 Chapter 4: PS 3 Measurement- Accuracy
22 Oct 2016
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We rarely can measure concepts directly (ex. Social class) problem of measurement = indirect measurement of concept. Solution: combine various measurable indicators into a pooled measure that is roughly related to the concept. Relating concepts through a theory is always true in theory oriented research and often true in engineering research. Solution: measure concepts that are directly measureable (votes: difficult because concepts that can be measured are trivial, too idiosyncratic to use in interesting theories. We choose to use statements by politicians and place in various categories use statement as an indirect measurement of the concept which the category represents. For a concept to be useful in building theories, it usually must be an abstraction which cannot be measured directly, so we often must work with variables that are indirect measurements of concepts. Chief problem of measurement is to ensure that relationships between concepts and measurements are such that the relationship between the measures mirrors the relationship between the concepts.
