Chapter 4:

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Concepts, Operationalization, and Measurement

Introduction

•We want to move from vague ideas of what we want to study to actually being able to recognize and measure it in the real world

•Otherwise, we will be unable to communicate the relevance of our idea and findings to an audience

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Conceptions and Concepts

•“Crime”

•Conception – mental image we have about something

•Concepts – words, phrases, or symbols in language that are used to represent these mental images in communication

•e.g., gender, punishment, chivalry, delinquency, poverty, intelligence, racism, sexism, assault, deviance, income

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Three classes that scientists measure (Kaplan, 1964)

•Direct observables – those things or qualities we can observe directly (color, shape)

•Indirect observables – require relatively more subtle, complex, or indirect observations for things that cannot be observed directly (reports, court transcripts, criminal history records)

•Constructs – theoretical creations. Cannot be observed directly or indirectly. = to Concept

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Conceptualization

•Specifying precisely what we mean when we use particular terms

•Results in a set of indicators of what we have in mind

•Indicates a presence or absence of the concept we are studying

•Violent crime = offender uses force (or threatens to use force) against a victim

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Indicators and Dimensions

•Dimension – specifiable aspect of a concept

•“Crime Seriousness” – can be subdivided into dimensions

•e.g., dimension – victim harm

•Indicators – physical injury, economic loss, psychological consequences

•Specification leads to deeper understanding

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Confusion over Definitions and Reality

•Concepts are abstract and only mental creations

•The terms we use to describe them do not have real and concrete meanings

•What is poverty? delinquency? strain?

•Reification – process of regarding as real things that are not

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Creating Conceptualization Order

•Conceptual definition (what is SES?)

•Working definition specifically assigned to a term, provides focus to our observations

•Gives us a specific working definition so that readers will understand the concept

•Operational definition (how will we measure SES?)

•Spells out precisely how the concept will be measured

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Progression of Measurement Steps

Conceptualization

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Conceptual Definition

Operational Definition

Measurements in the Real World

Operationalization Choices

•Operationalization – the process of developing operational definitions

•Moves us closer to measurement

•Requires us to determine what might work as a data-collection method

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Measurement as “Scoring”

•Measurement – assigning numbers or labels to units of analysis in order to represent the conceptual properties

•Make observations, and assign scores to them

•Difficult in CJ research because basic concepts are not perfectly definable

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Exhaustive and Exclusive Measurement

•Every variable should have two important qualities:

•Exhaustive – you should be able to classify every observation in terms of one of the attributes composing the variable

•Mutually exclusive – you must be able to classify every observation in terms of one and only one attribute

•Employment status

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Levels of Measurement

•Nominal – offer names or labels for characteristics (race, gender, state of residence)

•Ordinal – attributes can be logically rank-ordered (education, opinions, occupational status)

•Interval – meaningful distance between attributes (temperature, IQ)

•Ratio – has a true zero point (age, # of priors, sentence length, income)

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Implications of Levels of Measurement

•Certain analytic techniques have LoM requirements

•R level can also be treated as N, O, I

•You cannot convert a lower LoM to a higher one

•Therefore, seek the highest LoM possible

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Criteria for Measurement Quality

•Measurements can be made with varying degrees of precision

•Common sense dictates that the more precise, the better

•However, you do not necessarily need complete precision

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Reliability

•Whether a particular measurement technique, repeatedly applied to the same object, would yield the same result each time

•Problem – even if the same result is retrieved, it may be incorrect every time

•Reliability does not insure accuracy

•Observer’s subjectivity might come into play

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Methods of Dealing with Reliability Issues

•Test-retest method – make the same measurement more than once – should expect same response both times

•Interrater reliability – compare measurements from different raters; verify initial measurements

•Split-half method – make more than one measure of any concept; see if each measures the concept differently

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Validity

•The extent to which an empirical measure adequately reflects the meaning of the concept under consideration

•Are you really measuring what you say you are measuring?

•Demonstrating validity is more difficult than demonstrating reliability

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Methods of Dealing with Validity Issues

•Face validity – on its face, does it seem valid? Does it jibe with our common agreements and mental images?

•Content validity – does the measure cover the range of meanings included in the concept?

•Criterion-related validity – compares a measure to some external criterion

•Construct validity – whether your variables related to each other in the logically expected direction

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Measuring Crime

•Crime can be a dependent variable in exploratory, descriptive, explanatory, and applied studies

•Crime can also be an independent variable, as in a study of how crime affects fear and other attitudes

•It can be both: drug use <-> other offenses

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General Issues in Measuring Crime

•What offenses? How are do you conceptualize crime?

•What units of analysis?

•Specific entities about which researchers collect information

•Offender, victim, offenses, incidents

•What purpose? e.g., monitoring, agency accountability, research

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How We Find Out About Crime

•How do we find out about crime?

•Ask actual/alleged offenders

•Ask victims or witnesses

•Ask a neutral third party (an official agency)

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Crimes Known to Police

•Most widely used measures of crime are based on police records

•Certain types are detected almost exclusively by observation (traffic and victimless offenses)

•Most crimes reported by victim or witnesses

•What crimes are not measured well by police records?

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Uniform Crime Reports (UCR)

•Circa 1929, under FBI since 1930s

•Originally, reporting voluntary, but now very common

•Type I offenses (index crimes/offenses): murder, rape, robbery, larceny, burglary, aggravated assault, motor vehicle theft and arson (added in 1979)

•Type II offenses: a compilation of less serious crimes

•Summary-based, group level unit of analysis

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Assumptions of UCR

•Citizens know an offense has occurred

•Citizen reports offense to the police

•Officer can verify that the offense occurred

•Officer decides the offense deserves to be reported

•Agency’s numbers end up being forwarded to FBI on time

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Positives of UCR

•can compare agencies

•quick, easy, and efficient

•index offenses are valid indicators of public’s crime concerns

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Negatives of UCR

•Doesn’t count ALL crimes reported to police

•Jurisdictions vary in completeness of crime data they provide to FBI; voluntary

•Can suffer from clerical, data processing, political problems

•Hierarchy rule – only most serious crime counted in an incident

•Characteristics of victim deemphasized; only know characteristics of those arrested

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Incident-Based Police Records

•Based on incidents as units of analysis

•Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR)

•Police agencies submit detailed info about individual homicide incidents

•Can conduct a variety of studies that examine individual events

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National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS)

•Joint effort by FBI and BJS to convert UCR to a NIBRS

•NIBRS reports each crime incident rather than the total # of certain crimes for each LE agency

•Many features are reported individually about each incident, offenses, offenders, victims

•UCR – 7 Part I offenses, NIBRS – 46 Group A offenses

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Other Revisions with NIBRS

•Hierarchy rule dropped

•Victim type (indiv., business, gov’t, society/public)

•Attempted/completed.

•Computer-based submission

•Drug-related offenses

•Computers and crime

•Quality control; states require certification

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Measuring Crime Through Surveys

•Can obtain info on crimes not reported to police

•Can measure incidents police may not officially record as crimes

•Provides data on victims/offenders (individuals), and the incidents themselves (social artifacts)

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National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)

•Since 1972 by Census Bureau

•Sought to illuminate the “dark figure of crime”

•Longitudinal panel study: households agree to participate for 3 years (7 interviews; one every 6 months) and then replaced

•Does not measure all crime

•Respondents are asked screening questions

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Positives of NCVS

•Measures both reported and unreported crime

•Independent of changes in reporting

•More information about how crime impacted victim than UCR

•Provides more victim characteristics than UCR

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Negatives of NCVS

•Telescoping incident dates

•Faulty memory

•Little information on offenders

•No information on CJS response if reported

•Excludes crimes against commercial establishments

•Only includes residents of US

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Surveys of Offending

•Useful in measuring crimes that are poorly measured by other techniques (prostitution, drug abuse, public order, delinquency)

•Useful in measuring crimes rarely reported to police (shoplifting, drunk driving)

•Two ongoing self-report studies – NSDUH & MTF

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National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH)

•Based on a national sample of households

•Conducted since 1971; 2004 sample had n=68,000

•Includes questions to distinguish between lifetime use, current use, and heavy use

•Encourages candid responses via procedures

•Includes residents of college dorms, rooming houses, and homeless shelters

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Monitoring the Future (MTF)

•Conducted since 1975 by the National Institute on Drug Abuse

•Includes several samples of high school students and others, totaling about 50,000 respondents each year

•Questions concern self-reported use of alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs, delinquency, other acts

•A subset of 2,400 MTF respondents receive follow-up questionnaire

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Composite Measures

•Allows us to combine individual measures to produce more valid and reliable indicators

•Typology/Taxonomy – produced by the intersection of two or more variables to create a set of categories or types

•e.g., Typology of Delinquent/Criminal Acts (Time 1 and 2)

•None, Minor (theft of items worth less than $5, vandalism, fare evasion), Moderate (theft over $5, gang fighting, carrying weapons), Serious (car theft, breaking and entering, forced sex, selling drugs

•Nondelinquent, Starter, Desistor, Stable, Deescalator, Escalator

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Index of Disorder

•What is disorder? (Skogan, 1990)

•Distinguish b/w physical presence & social perception

• Physical disorder: abandoned buildings, garbage and litter, graffiti, junk in vacant lots

•Social disorder: groups of loiterers, drug use and sales, vandalism, gang activity, public drinking, street harassment

•Index created by averaging scores for each measure

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