Concepts Flashcards
What is a concept
A concept is a label we put on a phenomenon that enables us to link separate observations and to make generalizations.
Functions of concepts
Functions of Concepts
•Concepts perform a number of functions such as:
•i)Concepts provide a common language, which enables scientists to communicate with one another. Without a set of concepts with definite meanings, it will be difficult or impossible for scientists to communicate their findings or replicate each other’s studies.
•Considering that concepts are abstracted from perceptions and are used to convey and transmit information, they are very important in research.
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•Concepts do not actually exist in the external world. They are symbols of phenomena, not the phenomena themselves. Thus, treating concepts as though they were the concrete phenomena leads to the fallacy of reification (the error of regarding abstractions as real rather than the outcome of thinking).
•Thus, we cannot directly observe participation or bureaucracy. These concepts are generalizations we draw from specific observations, and some of them remain closer to the original observation than others do.
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•ii)Concepts provide scientists with the tools to develop a perspective.
•It permits the scientist, in a community of other scientists, to lift his own idiosyncratic experiences to the level of consensual meaning.
•iii)Concepts allow scientists to classify their experiences and to generalize from them.
•What this means is that scientists structure, categorize, order and generalize their experiences and observation through the instrumentality of concepts.
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•iv)Concepts are components of theories and as such facilitate explanations and predictions.
•Concepts are the most critical elements in any theory because they define its content and attributes.
•For example, the concepts of “power” and “legitimacy” define the substance of theories of governance. Also, the concept of “relative
What is a costruct
Constructs
•A construct is a concept that has the added meaning of having been deliberately and consciously invented or adopted for a special scientific purpose.
•“Power” is a concept, an abstraction from the observation of presumably how people in authority dispense command and expect to be obeyed.
•But as a scientific construct, “power” means both more or less than it may mean as a concept.
•What this implies is that scientists use constructs consciously and systematically in two ways:
–It enters into theoretical schemes and is related in various ways to other constructs;
–Concepts are so defined and specified that it can be observed and measured
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Types of definitions
Conceptual or Constitutive Definitions
•A constitutive or conceptual definition is one that uses concepts to define other concepts or constructs to define other constructs.
Operational Definitions
•An operational definition assigns meaning to a construct or variable by specifying the activities or “operations” necessary to measure it.
Types of operational definitions
There are two types of Operational Definition, namely:
–Measured operational definition: it describes how a concept will be measured;
–Experimental operational definition: this spells out the details of the investigator’s manipulations of a variable.
What is a variable
4)Variables
•A variable is anything that is changeable or alterable. That is, a characteristic that takes on different values under different conditions.
A variable is a concept that can be observed empirically
Types of variable
qualitative quantitative
Dependent and independent
Active and attribute
Any variable that cannot be manipulated is attribute variable. while active can
Continuous and categorical
Ratio
Ratio
•When we talk about ratio, we mean “the relationship between two groups or amounts, which expresses how much bigger one is than the other”
Nominal variable
Nominal variables are variables that have two or more categories,
Dichotomous variable
Dichotomous variables are nominal variables which have only two categories or levels
What is a set
Therefore, a set is a well-defined collection of objects or elements.
)Conceptual or Constitutive Definitions
A constitutive or conceptual definition is one that uses concepts to define other concepts or constructs to define other constructs.
For instance, if we define power as the capacity of X to make B do what B would otherwise not have done, we have used a number of concepts to define the concept of “power”.
Kerlinger (1973) has averred that some of the concepts and constructs of a scientific theory may be defined constitutively or conceptually.
The dependent variable is the variable being measured, while the independent variable can be controlled by the
experiment.
