Putting It All Together

Moving from identifying concepts to conceptualizing them and then to operationalizing them is a matter of increasing specificity. You begin with a general interest, identify a few concepts that are essential for studying that interest, work to define those concepts, and then spell out precisely how you will measure those concepts. Your focus becomes narrower as you move from a general interest to operationalization. One point not yet mentioned is that while the measurement process often works as outlined above, it doesn’t necessarily always have to work out that way. What if your interest is in discovering how people define the same concept differently? If that’s the case, you probably begin the measurement process the same way as outlined earlier, by having some general interest and identifying key concepts related to that interest. You might even have some working definitions of the concepts you wish to measure. And of course you’ll have some idea of how you’ll go about discovering how your concept is defined by different people. But you may not go so far as to have a clear set of indicators identified before beginning data collection, for that would defeat the purpose if your aim is to discover the variety of indicators people rely on.

Let’s consider an example of when the measurement process may not work out exactly as depicted above. Blackstone (2003) conducted a study to compare activism in the breast cancer movement with activism in the anti-rape movement. A goal of this study was to understand what “politics” means in the context of social movement participation. By observing participants to understand how they engaged in politics, an understanding was developed of what politics meant for these groups and individuals: politics seemed to be about power, “who has it, who wants it, and how it is given, negotiated and taken away” (Blackstone, 2007). Specific actions, such as the awareness-raising bicycle event Ride Against Rape, seemed to be political in that they empowered survivors to see that they were not alone, and they empowered clinics (through funds raised at the event) to provide services to survivors. By taking the time to observe movement participants in action for many months, Blackstone was able to learn how politics operated in the day-to-day goings-on of social movements and in the lives of movement participants. While it was not evident at the outset of the study, observations led to defining politics as linked to action and challenging power. In this case, observations preceded coming up with a clear definition for my key term, and certainly before identifying indicators for the term. The measurement process therefore worked more inductively than implied that it might.