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Concepts (Defining Concepts (An observable and measurable phenomenon (Ex,…

- - - - How does X influence Y?
    - - Resentment
      - Democracy
      - Corruption
  - - - Question expressed using ideas
        
        Difficult
        
        Holy shit it is unclear
      - Does power matter?
    - - Question expressed using tangible properties and can be answered empirically
      - Need to transform concepts into concrete terms
      - Same concepts can refer to variety of concrete terms
      - Ex
        
        Are women more liberal than men?
        
        Are "resentful" people more likely to vote for trump?
- - - - What's important to the concept?
      - Potential Problems
        
        Might think of empirical attributes that refer to a completely different concept
        
        May include terms that aren't measurable
        
        Might refer to different dimensions of a concept
        
        Liberalism means both social and economic
      - Ex: high self esteem might be conceptually defined as a person demonstrating a high degree of self worth.
      - Unit of analysis
        
        Entity to which concept applies
        
        Individual
        
        Household
        
        Municipality
        
        Congressional District
        
        Country
        
        International System
        
        Smallest level (individual) vs collections of individuals (aggregate)
    - - How exactly how the concept will be measured empirically
      - Ex: Operationally, you might define it as scoring above a certain number of a self-esteem scale.
      - How to
        
        1) Make a list of empirical attributes or concrete properties
        
        2) Get rid of everything that do not vary
        
        3) Get rid of everything that are not measureable
        
        4) Get rid of stuff that analyze a different dimension of the concept
      - Judging Operational Definitions
        
        To determine if an operational measure is a good measure, we ask two questions
        
        Is it reliable?
        
        If we used the same instrument repeatedly, would we get the same results?
        
        Is it valid?
        
        Does the operational definition actually measure the concept?
      - Measurement error
        
        Systematic Measurement error
        
        Introduces consistent, chronic distortion into empirical measurements
        
        Meh its all good
        
        Random Measurement Error
        
        "Random"; introduces chronic distortion into measurement process, producing inconsistent readings of concept
        
        Not durable
        
        Not related to instrument
        
        Random assignment to fix it
      - Step 3: Create Variables
        
        Variables are empirical measurements of characteristics
        
        Can take on different values-they vary
        
        There are different types of variables
        
        Levels of Measurement
        
        Ordinal
        
        Categories are ordered
        
        Mode, Median
        
        Index
        
        You can go left to right
        
        Likert Scale
        
        Agree strongly, etc.
        
        Nominal
        
        Categories
        
        Dichotomous/Dummy Variables
        
        Can only take on two values
        
        Mode
        
        Interval
        
        Difference in value means something
        
        Can use math on numbers
        
        Mode, Median, Mean
        
        Effect on findings
        
        Democracy doesnt have big effect on civil war if going by dichotomous
        
        When changed to ordinal
        
        Strong democracies less civil war
        
        Strong autocracy less civil war
        
        Weak democracy more civil war
    - - The concept of [economic liberalism] is defined as the extent to which individuals exhibit the characteristics of [supporting government spending for social programs]