SESSION 2: CONCEPTUALIZE THE CONTEXTUAL FACTORS
Do resea searcher ers s emplo loy y simila lar cont ntextua tual fact ctor ors? ■ You are given a softcopy of contextual (a.k.a. background) questionnaires used in three different well-known ILSA – TIMSS, PISA and SACMEQ. ■ Study these questionnaire. Identify similarities and differences of factors (as well as its respective indicators) across these questionnaire. ■ Summarize your discussion and present it to the group.
GROUP P PRESENT ENTATIO ION A N AND DISCUSSI SSION ON
ACTIVITY SUMMARY
CONCEPTUALIZATION, OPERATIONALIZATION AND MEASUREMENT
Do you notice that … ■ Some of these factors can be easily or directly measured? We can easily assign a number. For example: Gender: Male = 0 ; Female = 1 School Type : Public = 0 ; Private = 1 ■ However, some of these factors are difficult to measure. For example: Satisfaction Attitude towards Science/Mathematics Self-efficacy WHY? Because the phenomenon that is supposed to be measured is abstract, complex and not directly observable. Measurement of LATENT (unobservable) concept or construct
Can you give some example of constructs? ■ Interest toward science ■ Mathematics self-efficacy ■ Socio-economic status ■ Achievement
READ HANDOUT 6 Friendship Quality Scale (FQS)
DISCUSS THE EXAMPLE – FRIENDSHIP QUALITY SCALE
Devel elopmen ent o of a a Scale ( e (Mc McCoac ach et a al. l. (20 2013) 3) ■ Specify the purpose of the instrument. ■ Confirm that there are no existing instruments that will adequately serve your purpose. ■ Describe the constructs and provide preliminary conceptual definitions. ■ Specify the dimensions of the construct(s). ■ Develop final conceptual definitions for each dimension based on a thorough literature review. ■ Generate operational definitions—generate/select items for each of the dimensions. ■ Select a scaling technique, select/generate response scales ■ Match items back to dimensions, ensuring adequate content representation of each dimension. ■ Conduct a judgmental review of the items. ■ Develop directions for responding; create final version of survey (including formatting, demographic questions, etc.). ■ Pre-pilot instrument with a small number of respondents from the target group. Make necessary revisions based on their feedback. ■ Gather pilot data from a sample that is as representative as possible of your target population. ■ Conduct EFA, reliability analyses, initial examination of item and scale properties. ■ Revise the instrument based on the initial pilot data analyses. ■ Conduct a second pilot study followed by CFA, reliability analyses, additional examination of item. and scale properties; preliminary evidence of external relationships with other scales, constructs etc. ■ Prepare test manual and/or manuscript based on results of steps .
Cons nstruct Meas easur urem ement nt and and Val alid idat atio ion Pr n Proced edures es Source: MacKenzie, S. B., Podsakoff, P. M., Podsakoff, N. P. (2011). Construct measurement and validation procedures in MIS and behavioral research: Integrating new and existing techniques. MIS Quarterly, 35 (2), 294-334.
SOME NOTES TO BE REMEMBERED
What is Concept? ■ Concepts are words or signs that refer to phenomena that share common characteristics. It is a mental abstractions/ categories for things in the physical world. It involves putting something into a class, then recognizing others members of that class. ■ Conceptualization Is the process of clarifying what we mean by a concept. Involves providing a theoretical or conceptual definition of the concept. ■ Concept A mental image that summarizes a set of similar observations, feelings, or ideas Example: The Concept of CAT Concepts are building blocks of research.
Conce ncepts ts
Conce ncepts ts a as Cons nstruct tructs Abraham Kaplan (1964) distinguishes three classes of things that scientists measure. ■ The first class is direct observables Are those things we can observe rather simply and directly, like the colour of an apple or a check mark on a questionnaire. ■ The second class, Indirect observables It requires a "relatively more subtle, complex, or indirect observations“. For example : While we are not present, someone else has indicated what happened.” ■ The third class consists of construct These are theoretical creations that are based on observations but that cannot be observed directly or indirectly (e.g. IQ, prejudice, social economic status, etc.)
What at are cons nstructs ructs? ■ Constructs are mental abstractions that we used to express the ideas, people, organisations, events and/or objects/things that we are interested in. ■ Constructs are a way of bringing theory down to earth, helping to explain the different components of theories, as well as measure/observe their behaviour. ■ The table below provides some examples of these different types of constructs: From: http://dissertation.laerd.com/constructs-in-quantitative-research.php
Abstract traction L ion Level of a Cons nstruct ruct Constructs vary significantly in their complexity. By complexity , we mean the relative difficulty that people have understanding and measuring (i.e., observing) various constructs. Easy to understand and measure: The construct, GENDER, has just 2 attributes in humans: MALE & FEMALE If we choose to include the construct, GENDER, in our research, this would be relatively easy to justify. More difficult to understand and measure: Sometimes, we think that a construct is easy to understand, but can be more complex than we first thought. In reality, a significant proportion of constructs are of the more complex type. For example, take the word ABILITY, SELF-ESTEEM.
Indicators s and Dimen ensi sions s ■ Conceptualization gives definite meaning to a concept by specifying one or more indicators of what we have in mind. An indicator is a sign of the presence or absence of the concept we are studying. ■ Indicator: An observation that we choose to consider as a reflection of a construct we wish to study. ■ Dimension: A specifiable aspect of a concept. ■ A complete conceptualization involves both specifying dimensions and identifying the various indicators for each construct.
Opera rational tionaliz ization ation process whereby researchers specify empirical concepts that can be taken as indicators of the attributes of a concept ■ Involves providing operational definitions --consists of the specific questions asked, together with response categories to which cases are assigned. ■ Many operational definitions are possible. Choose the one that fits your research question.
Opera rational tional Definit nitions ions ■ An operational definition , specifies precisely how a concept will be measured, that is, the operations we choose to perform. ■ For example when you wish to examine socioeconomic status (SES) in a study, you may simply specify that you are going to treat SES as a combination of income and educational attainment. In this decision, we rule out other possible aspects of SES: occupational status, money in the bank, property, lifestyle, and so forth. ■ Our findings will then be interesting to the extent that our definition of SES is useful for our purpose.
Variabl iable a and A d Attribut tributes ■ An attribute is a characteristic or quality of something. Example: G ender is a variable composed of the attributes, that is, female and male . ■ The conceptualization and operationalization processes can be seen as the specification of variables and the attributes composing them.
Defining V Vari riable les a and A Attribu butes ■ When we operationalizing a construct we are creating a variables ■ A var ariab iable is composed of attributes that are the characteristics used to measure it that are varies.
Two o Steps ps in Conce ncept pt Meas asure urement nt ■ Be clear about the meaning of the concept and, identify all its dimensions, called c onceptualization . ■ Identify and define the variables with measures (dimension and indicators)
Measurement … ■ Measurement is the process of assigning numbers to a variables based on a set of rules (Hair, Wolfinberger Celsi, Money, Samouel, & Page, 2011) ■ Norman Campbell defined measurement simply as “the process of assigning numbers to represent qualities”, where a quality is a property that admits of non-arbitrary ordering (1920: 267). ■ Measurement process consists of moving from the abstract (concepts) to the concrete (measure of concepts).
Measurement … ■ We cannot measure abstract concepts or constructs such as satisfaction or ability, so one approach is to measure them indirectly using a set of items/indicators. We Need to Conceptualized and Operationalized the Construct (a.k.a. Latent traits) that we intent to measure
The True Score Equation - CTT X = t + e error Can be expressed diagrammatically Observed item Problem – with one indicator, the equation is unidentified . We can’t separate true True score score and error. 28
SESSION 3: CONCEPTUALIZATION AND OPERATIONALIZATION OF A CONSTRUCT GROUP A ACTIV IVIT ITY 1400 400 -1500 500
SEESION 3: CONCEPTUALIZE YOUR OWN CONSTRUCT
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