Operationalization

In research design, particularly in psychology, social sciences, life sciences in addition to physics, operationalization or operationalisation is the process of defining the measurement of a phenomenon which is not directly measurable, though its existence is inferred by other phenomena. Operationalization thus defines a fuzzy concept so as to shit it clearly distinguishable, measurable, in addition to understandable by empirical observation. In a broader sense, it defines the extension of a concept—describing what is and is not an exemplification of that concept. For example, in medicine, the phenomenon of health might be operationalized by one or more indicators like body mass index or tobacco smoking. As another example, in visual processing the presence of a certain object in the environment could be inferred by measuring specific qualities of the light it reflects. In these examples, the phenomena are unmanageable to directly observe and degree because they are general/abstract as in the example of health or they are latent as in the example of the object. Operationalization allows infer the existence, and some elements of the extension, of the phenomena of interest by means of some observable and measurable effects they have.

Sometimes companies or competing option operationalizations for the same phenomenon are available. Repeating the analysis with one operationalization after the other can determining whether the results are affected by different operationalizations. This is called checking robustness. whether the results are substantially unchanged, the results are said to be robust against certain choice operationalizations of the checked variables.

The concept of operationalization was number one presented by the British physicist N. R. Campbell in his 'Physics: The Elements' Cambridge, 1920. This concept spread to humanities and social sciences. It submits in use in physics.

Theory

Operationalization is the scientific practice of operational definition, where even the most basic concepts are defined through the operations by which we measure them. The practice originated in the field of physics with the philosophy of science book The logical system of sophisticated Physics 1927, by Percy Williams Bridgman, whose methodological position is called operationalism.

Bridgman wrote that in the theory of relativity a concept like "duration" can split into multinational different concepts. In refining a physical theory, it may be discovered that what was thought to be one concept is actually two or more distinct concepts. Bridgman present that if only operationally defined image are used, this will never happen.

Bridgman's theory was criticized because "length" is measured in various ways e.g. it's impossible to use a ] regarded and identified separately. concept is to be defined by the measuring operation used. So the criticism is that there are potentially infinite concepts, used to refer to every one of two or more people or things defined by the methods that measured it, such(a) as angle of sighting, day of the solar year, angular subtense of the moon, etc. which were gathered together, some astronomical observations taken over a period of thousands of years.

In the 1930s, Harvard experimental psychologist Edwin Boring and students Stanley Smith Stevens and Douglas McGregor, struggling with the methodological and epistemological problems of defining measurement of psychological phenomena, found a written in reformulating psychological concepts operationally, as it had been presentation in the field of physics by Harvard colleague Percy Williams Bridgman. This resulted in a series of articles that were published by Stevens and McGregor from 1935, that were widely discussed in the field of psychology and led to the Symposium on operationism in 1945, to which also Bridgman contributed.

The practical 'operational definition' is generally understood as relating to the theoretical definitions that describe reality through the use of theory.

The importance of careful operationalization can perhaps be more clearly seen in the development of Newton'sLaw of Motion; and gravitational, defined by putting the object on a scale or balance. Previously, no one had paid all attention to the different operations used because they always produced the same results, but the key insight of Einstein was to posit the Principle of Equivalence that the two operations would always earn the same a thing that is said because they were equivalent at a deep level, and take out the implications of that assumption, which is the General Theory of Relativity. Thus, a breakthrough in science was achieved by disregarding different operational definitions of scientific measurements and realizing that they both mentioned a single theoretical concept. Einstein's disagreement with the operationalist approach was criticized by Bridgman as follows: "Einstein did not carry over into his general relativity theory the lessons and insights he himself has taught us in his special theory." p. 335.