Business Research (MIS405)

Measurement of Variables:
Operational Definition

Dr. Md. Rakibul Hoque

University of Dhaka
 Measurement of Variables:
Operational Definition

 Explain how variables are measured.

 Explain when operationalization of variables is
necessary.
 Operationally define (or operationalize) abstract and
subjective variables.
 Measurement

 Measurement of the variables is an integral part of

research and an important aspect of research
design. Unless the variables are measured in some
way, we will not be able to find answers to our
research questions.
 To test the hypothesis that workforce diversity
affects organizational effectiveness we have to
measure workforce diversity and organizational
effectiveness.
 Measurement
 Measurement is the assignment of numbers or other
symbols to characteristics (or attributes) of objects
according to a pre-specified set of rules.
 Objects include persons, strategic business units,
companies, countries, bicycles, elephants, kitchen
appliances, restaurants, shampoo, yogurt, and so on.
 Examples of characteristics (or attributes) of objects are
organizational effectiveness, achievement motivation,
shopping enjoyment, length, weight, ethnic diversity,
service quality, conditioning effects, and taste.
 Measurement

 We cannot measure objects (for instance, a

company); we can measure characteristics or
attributes of objects (for instance, the organizational
effectiveness of a company).
 We can measure the length (the attribute) of a
person (the object), the weight of an elephant, the
shopping enjoyment of women, the service quality of
a restaurant, the conditioning effects of a shampoo,
and the taste of a certain brand of yogurt.
 Exercise

Objects Measurable Attributes

(Characteristics)
Restaurant

Consumer

Bicycle

Strategic business unit

 Answer

Objects Measurable Attributes

(Characteristics)
Restaurant Food quality, location, service
quality, responsiveness of
employees, Atmosphere, .
Consumer Shopping enjoyment, attitude toward
internet shopping, Price
consciousness, impulsiveness.
Bicycle Brand image, price, product quality.
Strategic business unit Sales, market share, organizational
effectiveness, ROI, market
orientation.
 Measurement
 To be able to measure you need an object and attributes of the object,
but you also need a judge.
 A judge is someone who has the necessary knowledge and skills to
assess “the quality” of something, such as the taste of yogurt, or the
communication skills of students.
 If we want to measure the gender (the attribute) of your employees (the
objects), you can simply ask the objects (employees) to provide you with
the necessary details via a self‐administered questionnaire. However, it
is unlikely that the object has the necessary knowledge and skills to act
as a judge when you want to measure the taste (the attribute) of yogurt
(the object), the service quality of a restaurant, the communication
skills of students, or even the managerial expertise of supervisors.
 Exercise

 Identify the object and the attribute. Give your

informed opinion about who would be an
adequate judge.
 Product quality of tablets (such as the Apple iPad
and the Samsung Galaxy Tab).
 Price consciousness of car buyers.
 Organizational commitment of school teachers.
 Marketing orientation of companies.
 Answer

Identify the object and the attribute. Give your informed

opinion about who would be an adequate judge.
Product quality of tablets (such as the Apple iPad and the

Samsung Galaxy Tab). Judge: consumer, computer expert.

Price consciousness of car buyers. Judge: car buyer

Organizational commitment of school teachers. Judge:

school teacher.
Marketing orientation of companies. Judge: researcher,

consultant.
 Measurement
 Attributes of objects that can be physically measured by
some standardized instruments pose no measurement
problems. For example, the length and width of a rectangular
office table can be easily measured with a measuring tape or
a ruler. The same is true for measuring the office floor area
and for measuring the weight of an elephant. Data
representing several demographic characteristics of office
personnel are also easily obtained by asking employees
simple, straightforward questions, such as: “How long have
you been working in this organization?” or “What is your
marital status?”
 Measurement
 The measurement of more abstract and subjective attributes is
more difficult. For instance, it is relatively difficult to measure the
level of achievement motivation of office clerks, the shopping
enjoyment of women, or the need for cognition of students.
 Likewise, it is not straightforward to test hypotheses on the
relationship between workforce diversity, managerial expertise,
and organizational effectiveness. The problem is that we cannot
simply ask questions like “How diverse is your company’s
workforce?” or “How effective is your organization?” because of
the abstract nature of the variables “workforce diversity” and
“organizational effectiveness.”
 Measurement
Easy, Objective and Abstract and Subjective
Precise Measurement Measurement

Blood Pressure

Educational Level

Body Temperature

Age

Product Quality

Job Satisfaction

Organizational
Effectiveness
 Operational Definition
(Operationalization)
 Operational definition refers to the process of defining
abstract and subjective constructs concepts in such a
manner that it can be measured. It is necessary because it
allows us to measure subjective characteristics and
phenomena which do not lend themselves to objective
measurement. One needs to make a number of important
decisions on how to translate the abstract and subjective
construct into a measure.
 Operationalizing is done by looking at the behavioral
dimensions, or properties denoted by the concept. These are
then translated into observable and measurable elements so
as to develop an index of measurement of the concept.
 Steps of Operationalization

 The first step is to come up with a definition of the

construct that you want to measure.
 Develop pool of items related/important to the
construct.
 Decide on response format (e.g., 5 point Likert-scales
with end-points ‘strongly disagree’ and ‘strongly
agree’).
 Collect data from representative sample from the
population.
 Finally, the validity and reliability of the measurement
scale need to be assessed.
 Operationalization
 After we have defined the construct, the next step in the process of
measuring abstract constructs is to go through the literature to find
out whether there are any existing measures of the concept.
 Both scientific journals and “scale handbooks” are important sources
of existing measures.
 Scale handbooks, such as the Marketing Scales Handbook or the
Handbook of Organizational Measurement, provide an exhaustive
overview of measurement scales that have appeared in the
academic literature. These handbooks help you to determine
whether a measurement scale exists and, if more than one
measurement scale exists, to make a logical selection between
available measures.
 Operationalization

The use of existing measurement scales has several

advantages.
First, it saves you a lot of time and energy.

Second, it allows you to verify the findings of others and to

build on the work of others.

Hence, if you want to measure something, see if it has been
measured before and then use this measure (adapt it to your
specific needs whenever this is needed). Make sure that you
document the use of existing measurement scales properly.
 Operationalization

 There are several measures of achievement

motivation available from the literature (Amabile,
Hill, Hennessey & Tighe, 1994; Gordon, 1973;
Heggestad & Kanfer, 1999; Super, 1970). But what
if there were no existing measures available? In
such a case, we would have to develop a measure
ourselves; this means that we would have to break
down the concept “achievement motivation” into
observable behavior or characteristics.
 Example

 Career Success
 Career Success could be either objective (as judged
by the profession), or subjective (as judged by
oneself).
 Objective career success is usually defined in terms of
the prestige of the position and status one holds, and
by one’s salary.
 Subjective career success is defined in terms of how
one feels about where one aspired to be at that
particular point in one’s career and where one actually
is.
 Example

Some items to measure subjective career success

are:
To what extent do you feel you have:
 Achieved whatever you had hoped to achieve at this

stage in your career

 Accomplished the kinds of goals you had set for

yourself
 Compared to others of similar background, made

progress in your career

Theoretical Framework
 Theoretical Framework

 Our model posits that perceived usefulness and

perceived ease of use determine an individual's
intention to use a system with intention to use
serving as a mediator of actual system use.
 Perceived usefulness (PU) –"the degree to which a
person believes that using a particular system would
enhance their job performance". It means whether
or not someone perceives that technology to be
useful for what they want to do.
 Theoretical Framework

 Perceived ease-of-use (PEOU) –"the degree to which a

person believes that using a particular system would be
free from effort". If the technology is easy to use, then the
barriers conquered. If it's not easy to use and the
interface is complicated, no one has a positive attitude
towards it.
 Intention to use is a factor that leads people to use the
technology.
 The actual system use is the end-point where people use
the technology.
 Theoretical Framework

 PU1: Using electronic mail improves the quality of the work I do.
 PU2: Using electronic mail gives me greater control over my
work.
 PU3: Electronic mail enables me to accomplish tasks more
quickly.
 PEU1: Learning to operate the electronic mail system is easy for
me.
 PEU2: I find it easy to get the electronic mail system to do what I
want it to do.
 PEU3: My interaction with the electronic mail system is clear and
understandable.
 Theoretical Framework

 INT1: I have high intention to use the electronic mail.

 INT2: I intend to learn about using electronic mail.
 INT3: I plan to use electronic mail to manage my job.
 ACT1: Electronic mail is a pleasant experience.
 ACT2: I use electronic mail currently.
 ACT3: I spend a lot of time on electronic mail.
 Gender: Male (1), Female (2)
 Exercise

 Read the paper by Cacioppo and Petty (1982) and

describe how the authors generated the pool of 45
scale items that appeared relevant to need for
cognition. You can find the paper on John
Cacioppo’s website:
http://psychology.uchicago.edu/people/faculty/caci
oppo/jtcreprints/cp82c.pdf
 Why do we need 34 items to measure “need for
cognition”? Why do three or four items not suffice?
 Exercise

Provide an operational definition of the

concept of “service quality” and develop
questions that would measure service
quality.
 Exercise

Compare your service quality measure to the

measure of Zeithaml, Berry, and Parasuraman
(1996) presented in the Journal of Retailing.
How does your measure differ from this

measure in terms of dimensions and elements?

Would you prefer using your own measure or

the measure of Zeithaml, Berry, and

Parasuraman? Why?
 Answer

 Service quality: the consumer’s overall impression of

the relative inferiority/ superiority of the organization
and its services (Bitner and Hubert, 1994).
 Zeithaml, Parasuraman, and Berry (1988) have
operationalized service quality by assessing service
and performance on 22 items believed to represent
five key dimensions (reliability, responsiveness,
assurance, empathy, and tangibles) of service
quality.
 Answer
 A valid measurement scale includes
quantitatively measurable questions or items
(or elements) that adequately represent the
domain or universe of the construct; if the
construct has more than one domain or
dimension, we have to make sure that
questions that adequately represent these
domains or dimensions are included in our
measure.
 International Dimensions of
Operationalization
 In conducting transnational research, it is important to
remember that certain variables have different meanings and
connotations in different cultures. For instance, the term
“love” is subject to several interpretations in different cultures
and has at least 20 different interpretations in some countries.
Likewise, the concept “knowledge” is equated with “jnana” in
some Eastern cultures and construed as “realization of the
Almighty.” Thus, it is wise for researchers who hail from a
country speaking a different language to recruit the help of
local scholars to operationalize certain concepts while
engaging in cross‐cultural research.
 Exercise

 Operational Definition
Advertising effectiveness / Brand loyalty / Compensation
scheme / Competence / Group support / Intention to
Turnover / Job skills / Life satisfaction / Media Trust /
Mental health / Organizational climate / Police
excesses / Role ambiguity / Role conflict / Role overload
/ Role stress / Work ethic / Work environment policies
Thank
You