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OPERATIONALIZATION

Sociologyindex, Sociology Books 2012

Operationalization in quantitative research is the act of specifying exactly how a concept will be measured. Before measuring the concept of ‘violent crime’ a researcher must decide what are indictors of violent crime and then specify how these indicators will be counted.

One might, for example, decide to use official reports of crimes known to the police and count all instances of homicide, manslaughter, attempted murder, assault levels 1, 2 and 3 and sexual assault levels 1, 2 and 3.

Examining how a researcher has operationalized a concept is the first place to look for weakness in the research design is operationalization.

In the above example, for instance, many would argue that assaults level 1 (the lowest level of assault) contain many acts which many would not really see as indicators of the concept of ‘violence’. The United States government, for example, does not include this kind of assault in their measures of violent crime.

Operationalizing Criminal Law and Policy in Local Law Enforcement: Organizational Permeability and the Policing of Hate Crime - Jenness, Valerie. and Grattet, Ryken
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.
Abstract: We find that socioeconomic conditions, racial and ethnic heterogeneity, and the presence of human rights commission all affect what we call the “permeability” of the local law enforcement agency, which, in turn, affects the likelihood an agency will have a general order pertaining to hate crime. By permeability we mean both the susceptibility of the organization to environmental influence and the degree to which a particular innovation aligns with the existing culture and practices of the local agency. Our analysis of the factors associated with a community-organizational nexus situates policy operationalization as a central intermediary mechanism through which abstract law is translated into concrete enforcement practices. We conclude by arguing that understanding the contours of policy operationalization requires devoting analytic attention not only to “law-on-the-books” and the “law-in-action,” but to the behavior of the “law-in-between” as well.

The operationalization of race and ethnicity concepts in medical classification systems: issues of validity and utility - Peter J. Aspinall, Centre for Health Services Studies, George Allen Wing, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NF, UK, P.J.Aspinall@kent.ac.uk
Health Informatics Journal, Vol. 11, No. 4, 259-274 (2005)
This article looks at the operationalization of race and ethnicity concepts in medical classification systems, notably the main bibliographical databases of MEDLINE and EMBASE. In particular, an attempt is made to assess recent changes, including the impact of the 2004 major changes to the MeSH headings for race and ethnic groups, and the introduction of 'Continental Population Groups'. The underlying conceptual basis of the typologies, their relevance for capturing specific population groups, and their overall usefulness in appraising the literature on ethnic/racial disparities in health are examined.

Exploring the Dialectic Between Abstract Rules and Concrete Facts: Operationalizing Principles and Cases in Engineering Ethics
Bruce McLaren and Kevin Ashley, University of Pittsburgh Intelligent Systems Program
Abstract: In our study of a national engineering society's set of engineering ethics cases decided by an ethical review board, we have identified a number of operationalization techniques which help to fill the gap between abstract principles and specific case facts and which help to analyze new problems.
Our goal is to develop a computational model that is capable of retrieving and applying operationalizations for the purpose of making accurate predictions of the facts, principles, and past cases that would be regarded as important in the analysis of new cases. In this paper, we present a preliminary design of such a model and outline an experiment to test it. We expect to make a contribution to interpretive case-based reasoning (CBR) by shedding light on the role of principles in decision making, by investigating the connection between abstract rules and concrete facts, and by testing the feasibility of using detailed, factual chronologies to represent cases.

Operationalizing "Globalization" in Empirical Sociology - Salvatore Babones, Univ. of Pittsburgh
Abstract: This paper offers a fresh approach to conceptualizing and operationalizing globalization in empirical sociological research in ways that are consistent with major theoretical treatments of the term. Two particularly important levels of analysis for studying globalization are identified: worldwide and national. Worldwide globalization is defined as the degree to which the international variability in international connectivity measures can be traced specifically to national engagement in worldwide systems. As a corollary, national globalization is defined as the deviation of a country's international connectivity from what would be expected for a country of its size and level of development.
These conceptual definitions yield surprisingly simple and easily implemented operational definitions for globalization. A comparative analysis of five important international connectivity indicators (trade, investment, remittances, tourist arrivals, international phone calls) confirms the validity of this approach. World Bank data are then used to estimate the trajectory of worldwide trade globalization over the period 1973-2002, as well as national globalization rankings for a constant panel of 111 countries. The globalization levels and rankings arrived at here are shown to have greater construct and criterion validity than those for globalization as typically operationalized in the literature. In particular, globalization as measured here is shown (in contrast to trade) to have a significantly negative time-series correlation with global economic growth.

Measure for Measure: Concept Operationalization and the Trade Interdependence-Conflict Debate - Erik Gartzke, Department of Political Science, Columbia University, Quan Li, Department of Political Science, The Pennsylvania State University,
Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 40, No. 5, 553-571 (2003)
While most quantitative studies find a negative relationship between economic interdependence and interstate disputes, research by Barbieri finds that interdependence precipitates conflict. Participants in the debate suggest several causes, but we show that alternative variable constructions are sufficient to account for the discrepant findings. A simple formal equivalence unites respective operationalizations of dyadic interdependence used by Oneal & Russett (trade dependence, trade ij /GDP i ) and Barbieri (trade share, trade i /trade i ) with the consensus construction of monadic trade openness (trade i /GDP i ).

A dynamic operationalization of Sen's capability approach
Marco Grasso (Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca)
Abstract: The limits of the utilitarian approach have led to a search for different notions of welfare. The income approach to well-being, in fact, doesn’t account for the diversity in human beings and for the heterogeneities of contingent circumstances. Amartya Sen, looking for broader notions of well-being, has developed an approach focused on the freedom of individuals to pursue their own project of life: the capability approach. The main purpose of the paper is to explore the possibility of using system dynamics to operationalize Sen’s framework. First of all we address the methodological issues that have to be considered in order to operationalize the capability approach in a dynamic framework. Then we investigate the architecture of the three- functionings model we devised to represent human well-being, as intended in the capability approach. Furthermore, we analyze in depth the structure of a particular functioning, and consider some simulations for the selected functioning and for the whole model over time. Finally, the concluding remarks suggest some indications about the use of system dynamics in order to operationalize the capability approach, and consider the main findings derived from the simulations carried out.

A Bayesian operationalization of the resource-based view
Abstract: A Bayesian operationalization of the resource-based view is presented and an attempt is made to explain that the gap between the theoretical utility and the practical utility of the resource-based view (RBV) could be reduced by operationalizing the theory more consistently with Penrose's original framework. It is seen that the Bayesian methodology used is more consistent with RBV as a theory of outliners as compared to the traditional classical statistical approaches.
Hansen, Mark H., Perry, Lee T., Reese, C. Shane
Strategic Management Journal, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISSN: 0143-2095

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