MEASURING VARIABLES

Muhammad Arsyad, Ph.D.

GRADUATE SCHOOL OF AGRICULTURE HASANUDDIN UNIVERSITY 2011 1

FOUNDATIONS OF RESEARCH
1.

Substantial

SCIENTIFIC METHOD
3. Konsistensi 2. Sistematika

Introduction

Concept (s) will not have meaning without variable (s) Concept into Variable: called Operationalization Process (more difficult process in the research) Variable: measured concept How the measurement is constructed strongly depends on the type of variable that we have.

Data Into Numbers

The Process of assigning numbers to observations according to a set of rules is Measurement (Knoke) Missing Data Issues and their treatments How important the Data Construction Coding Process produces; the codebook (a complete record of all coding decisions); a data file containing the entire set of numerical values for each variable for every case (Knoke)
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Dimension Clarity

Conceptually/Dimensionally: has to be clear What we are going to measure Variable (s) (can be measured) -- Conceptualizing --title (optional) How are you going to measure your variable (s)?

Time as a Variable

The influence of time on dependent variable (Koutsoyiannis) in various ways; (1) by introducing explicitly a variable t in the function, measured in time periods from the first given year onwards (2) by a dummy variable
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(3) by removing the trend from the variables before performing the regression (4) by working with the first differences of the variables (5) by introducing lagged variables in the function (6) by derivatives of the function with respect time
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Lagged Variables

Called Distributed Lag Models Yt = c + b1 Xt + b2 Xt-1 + b3 Xt-2 + .+ bz Xt-z + + t

Validity-Reliability in Gettting a Good Quality of Measurement

Validity: the degree to which a variables operationalization accurately reflects the concept it is intended to measure (Knoke) Reliability: the extent to which different operationalizations of the same concept produce consistent result (Knoke)
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Validity of measurement (Rybarova)

Validity of measurement
concerns the truth of the measurement it is the degree to which the measurement process measures the variable it claims to measure Is the IQ score truly measuring intelligence? What about size of the brain?

Different kinds of validity (Rybarova)

face validity

the simplest and least scientific definition of validity it is demonstrated when a measure superficially appears to measure what it claims to measure Based on subjective judgment and difficult to quantify e.g. intelligence and reasoning questions on the IQ test Problem - participants can use the face validity to change their answers is demonstrated when scores obtained from a new measure are directly related to scores obtained from a more established measure of the same variable e.g. new IQ test correlates with an older IQ test

concurrent validity (criterion validity)

Different kinds of validity (cont.) (Rybarova)

Different kinds of validity

predictive validity

when scores obtained from a measure accurately predict behavior according to a theory e.g. high scores on need for achievement test predict competitive behavior in children (ring toss game) is demonstrated when scores obtained from a measure are directly related to the variable itself Reflects how close the measure relates to the construct (height and weight example) in one sense, construct validity is achieved by repeatedly demonstrating every other type of validity

construct validity

Different kinds of validity (cont.) (Rybarova)

Different kinds of validity

convergent validity

is demonstrated by a strong relationship between the scores obtained from two different methods of measuring the same construct e.g. an experimenter observing aggressive behavior in children correlated with teachers ratings of their behavior is demonstrated by using two different methods to measure two different constructs convergent validity must be shown for each of the two constructs and little or no relationship exists between the scores obtained from the two different constructs when they are measured by the same method e.g. aggressive behavior and general activity level in children

divergent validity

Scales of measurement (Rybarova)

Scales define the type categories we use in measurement and the selection of a scale has direct impact on our ability to describe relationships between variables the nominal scale
simply represents qualitative difference in the variable measured can only tell us that a difference exists without the possibility telling the direction or magnitude of the difference e.g. majors in college, race, gender, occupation

the ordinal scale

the categories that make up an ordinal scale form an ordered sequence can tell us the direction of the difference but not the magnitude e.g. coffee cup sizes, socioeconomic class, T-shirt sizes, food preferences

Scales of measurement (cont.) (Rybarova)

the interval scale

the ratio scale

categories on an interval scale are organized sequentially, and all categories are the same size we can determine the direction and the magnitude of a difference May have an arbitrary zero (convenient point of reference) e.g. temperature in Farenheit, time in seconds consists of equal, ordered categories anchored by a zero point that is not arbitrary but meaningful (representing absence of a variable allows us to determine the direction, the magnitude, and the ratio of the difference e.g. reaction time, number of errors on a test

Summary
Scale of Measure -ment Nominal Ordinal Interval Rasio Properties Differentiating X X X X X X X X X X Ordered Interval Zero Statistical Analysis

Non-Parametric Parametric

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The relationship between reliability and validity (Rybarova)

they are partially related and partially independent reliability is a prerequisite for validity (measurement procedure can not be valid unless it is reliable e.g. IQ, huge variance of repeated measurements is impossible if we are truly measuring intelligence) it is not necessary for a measurement to be valid for it to be reliable (e.g. height as a measure of intelligence) A measure may be very reliable, but not valid(Knoke)

Muhammad ARSYAD, Ph.D.

Affiliation: Department of Socio-economic of Agriculture Faculty of Agriculture, Hasanuddin University Makassar, South Sulawesi 90245 T/F. +62-411-580486; E. arsyad@unhas.ac.id http://www.unhas.ac.id Skype: arsyadryukoku

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