CRIM 220 Midterm: Chapter 5

Conception

the mental image that represents a thought of an everyday thing

• subjective

• e.g. commuting to one person means driving, & to another it means busing

Concepts

a word/symbol that represents a mental image

• allows communicating

• e.g. violence to represent crime

Conceptualization

the process of turning an imprecise concept into a precise definition

Indicators

the end product of the conceptualization process

• describes a concept

• e.g. crime seriousness = harm to the victim

Dimensions

a specific aspect/characteristic of a concept

Reification

treating an non-real concept as if it was real

Conceptual definition

defining concepts using other concepts

• serves as a working definition

Operational definition

defining a concept through how it will be measured

Definition process

conceptualization ⇒ conceptual definition ⇒ operational definition ⇒ measurements in the real world

Exhaustive quality

when every participant can be put into at least one attribute/category

• no one is left out

• e.g. only have options for married or single excludes widows, divorcees, etc.

Mutually exclusive quality

when every observation/participants can be put into only one attribute/category

• categories don’t overlap

• e.g. “18-25” & 25-20” overlap because a 25 year old can be in both groups

Nominal

both exhaustive & mutually exclusive

• e.g. biological sex, race/ethnicity

Ordinal

logically ranked/ordered

• don’t know the distance between ranks

• e.g. fear of crime, socioeconomic status

Interval

ranked & have equal distances between

• no true zero

• e.g. temperature

Ratio

all qualities of the other measures

• true zero

• e.g. prison sentence length

Reliability

consistency of a measure ⇒ getting the same results every time

Interrater reliability

when the measure stays the same no matter who measures it

Split-half method

making more than one measurement for a concept

Validity

accuracy of a measure ⇒ measuring what is intended to be measured

Face validity

the quality that makes a measure look reasonable on the surface

Criterion-related validity

the degree a measure relates to an external criterion

Construct validity

based on the logical relationships among variables

Content validity

the degree a measure covers the range of meanings in a concept

Typologies

a classification of observations in terms of their attributes