You can measure phenomena in many different ways, but you must be sure that how you choose to measure gives you information and data that lets you answer your research question. If you’re looking for information about a person’s income, but your main points of measurement have to do with the money they have in the bank, you’re not really going to find the information you’re looking for!  Let’s consider Melissa Milkie and Catharine Warner’s study (2011)^[1] of first graders’ mental health. In order to conduct that study, Milkie and Warner needed to have some idea about how they were going to measure mental health. What does mental health mean, exactly? And how do we know when we’re observing someone whose mental health is good and when we see someone whose mental health is compromised?

In quantitative methods, conceptualization involves writing out clear, concise definitions for our key concepts. These are the kind of definitions you are used to, like the ones in a dictionary. A conceptual definition involves defining a concept in terms of other concepts, usually by making reference to how other social scientists and theorists have defined those concepts in the past.

Measurement starts with conceptualization

In order to measure the concepts in your research question, we first have to understand what we think about them. For example, masculinity is a concept. What do you think of when you hear that word? Presumably, you imagine some set of behaviors and perhaps even a particular style of self-presentation. Of course, we can’t necessarily assume that everyone conjures up the same set of ideas or images when they hear the word masculinity. While there are many possible ways to define the term and some may be more common or have more support than others, there is no universal definition of masculinity. What counts as masculine may shift over time, from culture to culture, and even from individual to individual (Kimmel, 2008). This is why defining our concepts is so important.

Not all researchers clearly explain their theoretical framework for their study, but they should! Without understanding how a researcher has defined their key concepts, it would be nearly impossible to understand the meaning of that researcher’s findings and conclusions. Back in Chapter 5, you worked toward developing a theoretical framework for your study based on the theoretical literature in your topic area. If you haven’t done that yet, consider flipping back to that section to familiarize yourself with some of the techniques for finding and using theories relevant to your research question. Continuing with our example on masculinity, we would need to survey the literature on theories of masculinity.  Wong et al. (2010)^[2] analyzed eight years of the journal Psychology of Men & Masculinity examining how often different theories of masculinity were used. Reading articles like this can help give you a sense of which theories are more accepted and which are more marginal in your field and give you a range of options from which you can find theories that will inform your project.

Conceptualization is a thorough process

Conceptualization is deceptively challenging—spelling out exactly what the concepts in your research question mean to you. Following along with our example, think about what comes to mind when you read the term masculinity. How do you know masculinity when you see it? Does it have something to do with men or with social norms? If so, perhaps we could define masculinity as the social norms that men are expected to follow. That seems like a reasonable start, and at this early stage of conceptualization, brainstorming about the images conjured up by concepts and playing around with possible definitions is appropriate. However, this is just the first step. At this point, you should be beyond brainstorming for your key variables because you have read a good amount of literature about them.

In addition, we should look at previous research and theory to understand the definitions that other scholars have already given for the concepts we are interested in. This doesn’t mean we must use their definitions, but understanding how concepts have been defined in the past will help us to compare our conceptualizations with how other scholars define and relate concepts. Understanding prior definitions of our key concepts will also help us decide whether we plan to challenge those conceptualizations or rely on them for our own work. Finally, working on conceptualization is likely to help in the process of refining your research question to one that is specific and clear in what it asks. Conceptualization and operationalization (next section) are where “the rubber meets the road,” so to speak and we have to specify what we mean by the question we are asking. As our conceptualization deepens, we will often find that our research question becomes more specific and clear.

If we turn to the literature on masculinity, we will surely come across work by Michael Kimmel, one of the preeminent masculinity scholars in the United States. After consulting Kimmel’s prior work (2000; 2008),^[3] we might tweak our initial definition of masculinity. Rather than defining masculinity as “the social norms that men are expected to follow,” perhaps instead we’ll define it as “the social roles, behaviors, and meanings prescribed for men in any given society at any one time” (Kimmel & Aronson, 2004, p. 503).^[4] Our revised definition is more precise and complex because it goes beyond addressing one aspect of men’s lives (norms), and addresses three aspects: roles, behaviors, and meanings. It also implies that roles, behaviors, and meanings may vary across societies and over time.

Conceptualization isn’t as simple as applying any random definition that we come up with to a term. Defining terms may involve some brainstorming at the very beginning. But conceptualization must go beyond that, to engage with or critique existing definitions and conceptualizations in the literature. Once we’ve brainstormed about the images associated with a particular word, we should also consult prior work to understand how others define the term in question. After we’ve identified a clear definition, we should make sure that every term used in our definition will make sense to others. Are there terms used within our definition that also need to be defined? If so, our conceptualization is not yet complete. Our definition includes the concept of “social roles,” so we should have a definition for what those mean and become familiar with role theory to help us with our conceptualization. If we don’t know what roles are, how can we study them?

Let’s say we do all of that. We have a clear definition of the term masculinity with reference to previous literature and we also have a good understanding of the terms in our conceptual definition…then we’re done, right? Not so fast. You’ve likely met more than one man in your life, and you’ve probably noticed that they are not the same, even if they live in the same society during the same historical time period. This could mean there are dimensions of masculinity. In terms of social scientific measurement, concepts can be said to have multiple dimensions when there are multiple elements that make up a single concept. With respect to the term masculinity, dimensions could be based on gender identity, gender performance, sexual orientation, etc. In any of these cases, the concept of masculinity would be considered to have multiple dimensions.

While you do not need to spell out every possible dimension of the concepts you wish to measure, it is important to identify whether your concepts are unidimensional or multidimensional. In this way, how you conceptualize your variables determines how you will measure them in your study. Unidimensional concepts are those that are expected to have a single underlying dimension and can be measured using a single measure or test. Examples include simple concepts such as a person’s weight, time spent sleeping, and so forth.

One frustrating thing is that there is no clear demarcation between concepts that are inherently unidimensional or multidimensional. Even something as simple as age could be broken down into multiple dimensions including mental age and chronological age, so where does conceptualization stop? How far down the dimensional rabbit hole do we have to go? Researchers should consider two things. First, how important is this variable in your study? If age is not important in your study (maybe it is a control variable), it seems like a waste of time to do a lot of work drawing from developmental theory to conceptualize this variable. On the other hand, if we were measuring the impact of age on masculinity, conceptualizing our independent variable (age) as multidimensional may provide a richer understanding of its impact on masculinity. Finally, as we will discuss in the next section, your conceptualizations lead directly to your operationalization of variables, and once your operationalization is complete, it will inform the measures you chose for your variables.

Conceptualization looks different in qualitative research

Conceptualization proceeds differently in qualitative research compared to quantitative research. Since qualitative researchers are interested in the understandings and experiences of their participants, they generally do not look for one fixed definition for a concept before starting to interview or interact with participants. A qualitative researcher’s job is to accurately and completely represent how their participants understand a concept, not to test their own definition of that concept.

If you were conducting qualitative research on masculinity, you would likely consult previous literature like Kimmel’s work mentioned above. From your literature review, you may come up with a working definition for the terms you plan to use in your study, which can change over the course of the investigation. However, the definition that matters is the definition that your participants share during data collection. A working definition is merely a place to start, and researchers should take care not to think it is the only or best definition out there.

In qualitative inquiry, your participants are the experts on the concepts that arise during the research study. Your job as the researcher is to accurately and reliably collect and interpret their understanding of the concepts they describe while answering your questions. Your understanding of concepts is likely to change over the course of qualitative inquiry, as you learn more information from your participants. Indeed, getting participants to comment on, extend, or challenge the researcher’s interpretations (called member checking, informant feedback, or respondent validation) is a hallmark of qualitative research. This is the opposite of quantitative research, in which definitions are predetermined before the inquiry begins.

The contrast between qualitative and quantitative conceptualization is instructive for understanding how quantitative methods (and positivist research in general) give greater weight to the knowledge of the researcher over the knowledge of study participants and community members. In positivism, the implication is that the researcher is the “expert,” and can define concepts based on their expert knowledge of the scientific literature. This knowledge is in contrast to the lived experience that participants possess from experiencing the topic under examination day-in, day-out. For this reason, it would be wise to remind ourselves not to take our definitions too seriously and be critical about the limitations of our knowledge.

Reification

Reification is the process of considering something abstract to be a concrete object or thing. To some extent, reification occurs whenever we define a contruct in terms of observational terms or indirect observables. However, we should not think that any conceptualization is “real,” or more real than other conceptualizations. It would also be wrong to assume that just because definitions exist for some concept that the concept itself exists beyond some abstract idea in our heads. Although we rely on our conceptualizations of constructs in research and everyday life, it may sometimes lead us to commit the “fallacy of reification.” This happens when we mistakenly consider something abstract to actually be a concrete model that represents it. This Logically Fallacious webpage has some good examples. You can also watch this short 2-minute video for a clear explanation: