Having a clear and complete conceptual definition of a construct is a prerequisite for good measurement. For one thing, it allows you to make sound decisions about exactly how to measure the construct. If you had only a vague idea that you wanted to measure people’s “memory,” for example, you would have no way to choose whether you should have them remember a list of vocabulary words, a set of photographs, a newly learned skill, or an experience from long ago. Because psychologists now conceptualize memory as a set of semi-independent systems, you would have to be more precise about what you mean by “memory.” If you are interested in long-term declarative memory (memory for facts), then having participants remember a list of words that they learned last week would make sense, but having them remember and execute a newly learned skill would not. In general, there is no substitute for reading the research literature on a construct and paying close attention to how others have defined it.
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