This semester, I’ve been working with two wonderful students doing mentored research projects of their own design. As they’ve been developing their research questions, I am reminded fondly of an exercise I did in a research methods class during grad school.  

The professor, Dr. Ellen Goldring, had us write out our research questions on the white boards that circled the room, large enough for everyone to be able to read from afar. We then underlined all of the concepts in our questions that we would have to define and, ultimately, find a way to measure. For some reason, this relatively simple and low-tech exercise has always stuck with me, perhaps because it encouraged me, a purely quantitative researcher always hungry to dig into some numbers, to focus on my other deep love: words.  

The textbook for that course was Investigating the Social World by Russell Schutt (2012), which still has a devoted place on my bookshelf. Schutt defines a “concept” as “a mental image that summarizes a set of similar observations, feelings, or ideas, indicators, and overlapping dimensions” (95). These mental images are, in many ways, beyond words, so it takes insight from theory, past literature, real-world observation, and inquiry to come up with a clear definition of what we mean by these concepts. 

Measurement 

After providing a clear definition of the concepts, the next step for researchers is to decide what kinds of indicators they will use to get at that concept, and, ultimately, how they will measure those indicators.  

One image in Schutt’s book shows different concepts in text boxes next to the descriptions of the measures of those concepts. The text boxes for the concepts and measures are scaled against the level of abstraction. The more abstract the concept, the more distance there would be between the concept and the measure. For example, the concept of age (less abstract) and the measurement of age are closely aligned. The concept of wellbeing (more abstract) and the measurement of wellbeing tend to be much farther apart.  

In another research methods guide, Mueller (2004) writes: 

“Concepts vary in their degree of abstractness. As an example, human capital is a very abstract concept, whereas education (often used as an indicator of human capital) is less abstract. Education can vary in quality and quantity, however, and thus is more abstract than years of formal schooling. Social science theories that are more abstract are usually viewed as being the most useful for advancing knowledge. However, as concepts become more abstract, reaching agreement on appropriate measurement strategies becomes more difficult“. (Mueller 2004, 162)

No matter which concept we’re interested in or how abstract or concrete it is, we are helped by first giving a clear definition of the concept, then by acknowledging that the measure and the definition are not the same thing. 

Research → Teaching 

The necessity of providing clear definitions goes far beyond academic research, moving into our everyday lives as data literate people. If we start our interpretation of data or of the results of data analysis from the measures without context, we risk overlaying our own mental images on the variable to form our own concept, which may not align with how the data was collected.  

For example, after I teach my introductory statistics students to conduct hypothesis tests, I have them read a report that uses these tools to test the relative effectiveness of online versus face-to-face learning for remedial high school algebra classes. I like this report for a number of reasons. It is well structured, communicates most results using clear and effective graphs, and is ultimately about how high school students can learn best, which is something my students can relate to.  

But the report is relatively old—2016. I point out this date to students and need to remind them that the term “online learning” meant something very different in 2016 than it does today. In this report, the “online learning” platform involved students using a computer program to go through course material while in a physical classroom with a teaching assistant. This in-person, asynchronous pacing isn’t even particularly abstract, but it is still a far cry from what my students’ mental image of “online learning” is today! 

If students don’t read carefully, if they don’t make sure to consider how the researchers defined the concept “online learning,” their interpretation of the whole report will be deeply flawed. 

Making it Matter 

In social research, confronting the complexity of defining and measuring things often leads to particularly fun rabbit holes. As Mueller alludes to, the most interesting concepts are often so interesting in part due to their abstraction. This abstraction, in turn, makes them hard to define and even harder to measure. 

Writing those concepts on the board made the words and their associated mental images bigger. It made a visual statement that measurement needed to both align to the definition of the concept and that the measurement was not the same thing as the concept. 

References 

Mueller, Charles W. 2004. “Conceptualization, Operationalization, and Measurement.” The SAGE Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods, 162–66.https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412950589.n150. 

Schutt, Russell K. 2012. Investigating the Social World: The Process and Practice of Research. 7th ed. SAGE Publications. 

Taylor, Suzanne, Peggy Clements, Jessica Heppen, et al. 2016. Comparing the Effects of Online and Face-to-Face Credit Recovery in Algebra I. Accessed June 2021. https://www.air.org/sites/default/files/2021-06/Online-vs-F2F-Credit-Recovery.pdf 

About the Author 

Cora Wigger is an assistant professor of economics and a 2025–2027 CEL Scholar. Her research focuses on the intersections of education and housing policy, with an emphasis on racial inequality and desegregation. At Elon, she teaches statistics and data-driven courses and contributes to equity-centered initiatives like the “Quant4What? Collective” and the Data Nexus Faculty Advisory Committee. 

How to Cite This Post 

Wigger, Cora. 2025. “Defining and Measuring.” Center for Engaged Learning (blog). Elon University. December 23, 2025. https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/defining-and-measuring/.