Operationalizing concepts for your thesis

Operationalizing something means that you make it measurable. Some concepts are inherently measurable, such as weight and education level, while others are abstract and can be measured in many ways. Think of the degree to which someone has fear of failure, or the opinion of a respondent about an advertisement you present them with. In these cases, you need to operationalize the variables so that you can measure them and perform calculations with them during your analysis.

Operationalization is making abstract concepts concrete and measurable. In doing so, you determine a reliable and valid way to measure how much of something is present in your research population.. Operationalization is a prerequisite for collecting data and analyzing data. Based on that, you can confirm or reject your hypotheses.

By operationalizing concepts and substantiating the choices you make in doing so, you make your research more reliable and valid.

Keep in mind that you can often operationalize the concepts from the research question in a variety of ways.It is important to make these choices consciously. For example, first establish your specific definition of a concept before figuring out how to measure it.

For example, you can define and measure the concept of "empathy" in many ways. Do you understand empathy as "showing understanding when someone tells or experiences something difficult"? Or, do you see it as "offering a listening ear" or as "being emotionally affected by intense news"? The choice of definition affects how best to go about operationalizing the concepts in your research question.
 

Suppose you want to measure the extent to which participants in your study are empathetic. Namely, you are investigating the relationship between empathy and another variable. You can operationalize the variable "empathy" in several ways. 

Examples of the operationalization of empathy are:

• You present respondents with a number of situations and ask how they would act in those specific situations where an empathetic response is common. 

• You have people fill out an existing questionnaire from another researcher about empathy.

• You present various statements where participants must indicate if they completely disagree, completely agree, or something in between. 

• You show participants a video of an intense event and observe how they react to it

• You assess each candidate's empathy using a standardized list of possible responses by coding candidates' reactions.

• You ask participants about their EQ or use a standard EQ questionnaire.

It is often wise to also look at how other researchers make a particular construct measurable. Literature research can help you make your own choices in this regard. Also, always describe in the methods chapter how you operationalize concepts in your thesis and why your chosen approach is a reliable and valid way to measure the concept.

Are you going to operationalize variables for your thesis? Then follow these steps:

1. Decide which concepts you will measure in your research. Suppose you want to measure how phone use affects students' study performance. Then the concepts you want to measure are "phone use" and "study performance."

2. Choose the variables associated with these concepts. Concepts often include several types of variables that you can measure. For example, do you look at the number of hours someone uses their phone, the number of times someone grabs their phone, the apps someone uses or the time of day someone uses their phone? The concepts in this case could be "amount of phone use during lectures" and "number of courses students pass in one sitting."

3. Establish your hypothesis(s). With this, you predict what relationship you believe exists between the variables. Of course, you must substantiate the hypothesis. Often the hypothesis flows logically from the literature findings you discussed in the theoretical framework. 

4. See how others measure these variables. You are often not the first person to measure a particular variable. See how others are doing this and get inspiration from that. This is especially true for concepts that are more difficult to operationalize. 

5. Determine your method of operationalization. Finally, you make a choice about how you want to operationalize the concepts in a reliable and valid way. For example, draw up the specific questions you will ask to measure the construct or determine which existing questionnaire you want to use. 

Finally, in the discussion section, after completing your research, you will look back at the operationalizations in your research. Did they, in retrospect, influence your results? What would you do differently next time?

Are you busy operationalizing constructs for your thesis? If so, more research steps await you after you are done. Don't worry: we are here to help! On our site you will find all kinds of useful articles and tips about doing research, likeexplanations about the types of research, types of variables and research methods. We also explain how to write your thesis and how to create a solid thesis structure. Be sure to check out our various articles so you can start your research successfully.