Discussion Section | Psychology 242

Operational Definitions

In psychology researchers often measure things that range from the concrete and tangible (e.g., number of cigarettes a person smokes) to the more abstract or fuzzy (e.g., that feeling of regret that emerges in certain dreams). Before a researcher can measure something, it is necessary for him or her to specify in a concrete way which observable features will “count” as a sign or indicator of the property that the researcher ultimately cares about. The process of specifying the observable manifestations of a construct and outlining exactly how they will be counted is called the process of operationally defining a construct.

In the case of cigarette smoking, specifying the signs or indicators isn’t too challenging. For example, if we treat smoking as a categorical variable, we may classify someone as smoking if he or she lights a cigarette and takes at least two puffs. The researcher needs to specify these criteria in advance—before taking the measurements. It is also important for the researcher to consider what things do not count as smoking. In our example, what would we do if the person didn’t light his or her own cigarette?

Students should break into groups and each group should find ways to operationalize two of the following constructs. Specifically, students should create a list of concrete things that would be a “sign” or indicator of each concept, as well as a list of fuzzy things that would not count.

less tricky	tricky
alcohol consumption	passionate attraction
driving ability	self-confidence
a kiss	verbal intelligence
a nightmare	creativity
an argument between two people	pain

Each group should work on one construct from the “tricky” list and one from the “less tricky” list. Each group should be prepared to discuss for the larger class what made one kind of construct more tricky than the other.

Next week, we’ll test some of these operational definitions in class by viewing a video and seeing how well different observers—using the same operational definitions—agree on their measurements. In this spirit, the operationalizations should be suitable to observation. (For example, we do not want to operationalize “pain” by literally hitting someone. We need to discern whether a person is experiencing pain, whether conceptualized categorically or continuously, simply by observing the person.)