The Practice of Social Research

Chapter Five.  Conceptualization, Operationalization, and Measurement

MEASURING ANYTHING THAT EXISTS
    Conceptions, Concepts, and Reality
    Conceptions as Construct

    I will suggest to you in this chapter that social researchers can measure anything that exists. Before you object, however, beware that "existence" is trickier than you may think.  We are going to examine the nature of conceptions (mental images), concepts (more organized families of conceptions), and reality (more elusive than it seems).

    We are going to see that most of the topics we want to study in social research are intellectual constructs; they do not exist in nature.  Measurement, then, is not a simple matter of observing what's there but it also depends on a definition of what's out there.