VARIABLE OPERATIONALIZATION
The OPERATIONALIZATION section of a proposal tells the
reviewer of the proposal precisely what you mean when you refer to
the variables in your project. This section must clear up any
confusion others (or you) may have about the meaning and
measurement of the variables in your study.
Operationalization:
When you have chosen the variables for your research questions, you must also
operationalize those variables. Operationalization answers two key questions:
1) How is each variable defined?
2) How is each variable measured?
Definition:
Defining each variable is often a technical exercise based on specific jargon and
uses of words that are characteristic to your area of research. One place to begin is to
consider how other researchers defined your variables in their research. You may
adjust or adapt other definitions to meet your own needs, or you may borrow the
definitions that other researchers have used (if you use others’ definitions, or if your
adapted definition is inspired by other researchers, then you must reference that
definition the same way you did in your literature review). Never rely on a dictionary
(or Wikipedia) definition for your operationalization. Dictionaries may give you some
inspiration, but they are not adequate for defining variables in the specific way it is used
in a research project.
Measurement:
You must also indicate how the variable is to be measured in your research.
Some variables, like age or height, are pretty straightforward, but you must still state the
method of measurement: “age will be measured in years,” or “height will be measured
in inches.” For more complex variables, like political persuasion or racism, you must
indicate how you will quantify these concepts so they can be used as numbers for
statistical analysis. Political persuasion might be a nominal variable determined by
something as simple as a single question on a survey that asks:
How would you describe yourself (check one):
_____ Liberal
_____ Conservative
or, you may use a method which produces a ratio variable by asking several questions
that would be combined into a score so that you, the researcher, could determine
quantitatively how much of a characteristic (such as liberalism) that each subject
possesses. However it is done, you must describe your method for doing so in the
operationalization section (describe it in a way that other researchers would make the
same decisions about each subject if they followed your method).