Concepts

1. Concepts are often contested. Identifying and defining our key concepts can be a challenging task. Consider John Gerrings (2001) effort to define a common social science concept: ideology. In the process of defining that concept, Gerring identified more than 30 distinct definitional traits used in the literature. Reading that literature we may be unsure whether ideology should be defined in terms of opinions, beliefs, symbols, or attitudes. 2. Smith and Medin (1981) suggest three general approaches to understanding the nature of concepts. The classicalapproach held that all instances of a concept shared common properties, and that these common properties were necessary and sufficient to define the concept.. The probabilistic or prototype assumes that instances of a concept can vary in the degree to which they share certain properties. Finally, the exemplar view holds that there is not single representation of an entire class or concept, but only specific representations of the classs exemplars. Many social science concepts likely fit under the probabilistic or exemplar views. Consider democracy. There are so many different forms of democracy that exist in the world that we could not easily use a classical approach. The construction of many of the popular indexes for measuring democracy is in part a recognition that democratic nations vary in the characteristics they have in common (the probabilistic view). The existence of rival indexes for measuring democracy suggests we are talking about a class of political phenomena which may be impossible to identify using a single description (the exemplar view). 3. As Gerring (2001) suggests, we might identify and define a concept by adopting a definition others have used; considering what explains the concept or what the concept itself explains; exploring the intellectual history of a concept; or grouping together the specific definitional attributes that other definitions and uses of the word provide.

Measurement
1. After we have determined precisely what our concept is, we often still want to determine a way to indicate and measure its presence in the real world. 2. We want our measurements to be sensitive, valid, and reliable. a. Sensitivity is about the level of precision in your measures. In general you want to keep be as sensitive as possible, but you should keep in mind the limits of your

measurement method. Some measurement methodssuch as survey rating scales demonstrate decreased reliability when there are attempts to increase sensitivity. i. One aspect of precision is the level of measurement. Nominal measures are variations in kind or type. Marital status is an example. Ordinal measures demonstrate variation in degree along a continuum, such as a rank order of preferences. Interval measures also vary on a continuum but the relative positions on the continuum are measurable and significant. An example is the use of time as a scale. Finally, ratios are like intervals except that the number zero is also meaningful. It is possible with a ratio scale to say something has twice the value of something else. An example would be the age of a person. b. Validity is the extent to which what you measure is what you say you measure. i. Face Validity: plausible on its face ii. Content Validity: extent to which all components of a systematized concept are measured in the indicator; matching a list of attributes iii. Criterion-related Validity: extent to which an indicator matches criteria; predictive, concurrent iv. Construct Validity: extent to which what you measure behaves as it should within a system of related concepts; an attribute of a measure/indicator c. Reliability is the extent to which a measure is free from random error. A reliable measure is repeatable, consistent and dependable. 3. It is useful to clearly state your definition and measurement process for key variables in your research, especially when dealing with concepts for which there may be rival definitions.