Available under Creative Commons-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
- Define concept.
- Describe why defining our concepts is important.
- Describe how conceptualization works.
- Define dimensions in terms of social scientific measurement.
- Describe reification.
In this section we’ll take a look at one of the first steps in the measurement process, conceptualization. This has to do with defining our terms as clearly as possible and also not taking ourselves too seriously in the process. Our definitions mean only what we say they mean—nothing more and nothing less. Let’s talk first about how to define our terms, and then we’ll examine what I mean about not taking ourselves (or our terms, rather) too seriously.
- 1988 reads
