Concepts, operationalization & measurement Week 3

1. Concepts, operationalization & measurementWeek 3 Professor James Byrne

2. Week 3: Lecture outline • Literature review & Research Evaluation Question: Tips • Clarifying Key Concepts: • Definition • Operationalization • (Measurement)

3. Sourcing your Literature • Start off by searching key terms in Google & Google Scholar • This will help orient you in terms of gathering background info on your topic • Use the UML Library Online • Go into Portal • Select ‘Journals’ for academic journal articles 3

4. Writing your literature review • Your literature review must do these things: • be organized around and related directly to the thesis or research question(s) you have been developing • synthesize results into a summary of what is and is not known • identify areas of controversy in the literature • formulate questions that need further research 4

5. Funnel Structure: Key points to include • Start broad; end narrow • What is the crime problem your chosen intervention seeks to address? • Why is this problem important to focus on? • What is the intervention you’ve chosen? • Why is this intervention important to focus on? • What are the aims of the intervention? • What does past research suggest about (the effectiveness of) this intervention? • Any controversial issues? • What is your research evaluation question(s)? • What are the key concepts that are included in your question? 5

6. Literature Review • Each piece of literature should be reviewed in terms of: • Aims / Research Questions addressed • Methods Used • Key Results • Your analysis of the study • Problems, Gaps, Limitations 6

7. Research Evaluation Question(s) • Your lit review should end with a presentation of your own research evaluation question & rationale • Your questions should be focused • Must include an intervention • That has been designed to address a crime problem • Must focus on evaluating the effectiveness of the intervention in terms of its specified goals • You must clearly define the concepts you are addressing in your research question(s) 7

8. Definition of Key Concepts • Conceptualization • What do you mean by the concept being studied? • If you are going to study sex offending and recidivism: • How do you define “sex offending”? • What type of offences will you focus on? • How do you define “recidivism”? • What parameters will you use to define it? • You need to specify and define ALL the key concepts you wish to study 8

9. Operationalization & Measurement • Operationalize your concepts • How do you expect to ‘observe’ your defined concept in operation so you can measure it? • Eg. Intervention addressing Fear and Violent Crime: • How will you operationalize fear of crime as you have defined it? • Operationalization - Self-reports from residents in an area • Measurement - Questionnaire item: how safe do you feel in your house, downtown at night, etc. • How will you operationalize violent crime? • Operationalization – incidents involving inter-personal violence in public places • Measure - Official QPS records of reported violent crime incidents in South Brisbane 9

10. Progression of measurement steps Conceptualization Conceptual definition Operational definition Measurements in the real world 10

11. Class Discussion Round • What are the key concepts in your research evaluation question? • How will you define these concepts? • How do you think you might operationalize these concepts in order to measure them? 11

12. Next Week • Assessment 1 is due !!! 12