Psychology 202: Research Methods, Prof. Melcher

NAME: _____________________________________________

Operational Definitions assignment In order to do research and communicate meaningfully with others, researchers must go beyond the

conceptual definition of a construct. Dictionaries provide conceptual definitions, which tend to be abstract. For example, depression is defined conceptually as “a state of being in which one exhibits lowered initiative and has sad and gloomy thoughts”. Researchers begin with conceptual definitions, of course, but in order to use them, they have to "get real" by using or devising ways to measure the abstract concept. This is the purpose of operational definitions. An operational definition specifies the operations used to define and measure the concept.

There are two types of operational definitions, measured and manipulated (or experimental). In the first, one simply measures to record the presence or magnitude of the concept. An example would be to measure the air temperature, operationally defined as "degrees Celsius". A psychologist could measure concept of "mood" in terms of behavioral observations (degree of animation), by using a questionnaire (have the person respond to Likert scale questions about how they feel at the moment), or by taking physiological measures (e.g., pulse, eye dilation, etc). These examples would all represent passive measures of mood.

Alternatively, you could actively, or experimentally, induce different moods. Note that manipulation necessarily involves doing something to the organism (human or animal) to change its psychological state. Following my example, mood could be manipulated by having subjects view a very gloomy or uplifting film. Of course, you would need to verify that your manipulation was successful by collecting data (such as above). In this example, you would want to verify that people who watched the gloomy film word had lower self-reported mood scores, different galvanic skin response, etc., than those who watched the uplifting film! Note that you have now operationally defined “mood” as the state induced by your manipulation.

For this assignment, look up three psychological cconcepts. A good source is the glossary from any psychology test. You may use concepts from the topic that you plan to research or you may identify others such as: attachment, aggression, dream state, memory, attention, intelligence, dominance, self-concept, etc. Provide a conceptual definition and two (2) operational definitions, one measured passively and one manipulated actively. Be sure that another researcher could replicate your definitions. NOTE: This assignment is made more difficult (though perhaps not impossible, with some creativity) if you choose clinically oriented concepts, such as “personality”, “depression”, “eating disorder”, etc.. This is because these are much more difficult to manipulate compared to narrower concepts such as “memory”, “need for affiliation”, “attachment”, etc.

Concept 1: ________________________________________________________________________

Conceptual definition (from a dictionary):

Operational definition (measured only):

Operational definition (manipulated):

Concept 2: _______________________________________________________________________

Conceptual definition:

Operational definition (measured only):

Operational definition (manipulated):

Concept 3: _______________________________________________________________________

Conceptual definition:

Operational definition (measured only):

Operational definition (manipulated):