Concepts, operationalization & measurement Week 3 Professor James Byrne

Week 3: Lecture outline  Literature review & Research Evaluation Question: Tips  Clarifying Key Concepts:  Definition  Operationalization  (Measurement )

Sourcing your Literature  Start off by searching key terms in Google & Google Scholar  This will help orient you in terms of gathering background info on your topic  Use the UML Library Online  Go into Portal  Select ‘Journals’ for academic journal articles 3

Writing your literature review  Your literature review must do these things:  be organized around and related directly to the thesis or research question(s) you have been developing  synthesize results into a summary of what is and is not known  identify areas of controversy in the literature  formulate questions that need further research 4

Funnel Structure: Key points to include  Start broad; end narrow  What is the crime problem your chosen intervention seeks to address?  Why is this problem important to focus on?  What is the intervention you’ve chosen?  Why is this intervention important to focus on?  What are the aims of the intervention?  What does past research suggest about (the effectiveness of) this intervention?  Any controversial issues?  What is your research evaluation question(s)?  What are the key concepts that are included in your question? 5

Literature Review  Each piece of literature should be reviewed in terms of:  Aims / Research Questions addressed  Methods Used  Key Results  Your analysis of the study  Problems, Gaps, Limitations 6

Research Evaluation Question(s)  Your lit review should end with a presentation of your own research evaluation question & rationale  Your questions should be focused  Must include an intervention  That has been designed to address a crime problem  Must focus on evaluating the effectiveness of the intervention in terms of its specified goals  You must clearly define the concepts you are addressing in your research question(s) 7

Definition of Key Concepts  Conceptualization  What do you mean by the concept being studied?  If you are going to study sex offending and recidivism:  How do you define “sex offending”?  What type of offences will you focus on?  How do you define “recidivism”?  What parameters will you use to define it?  You need to specify and define ALL the key concepts you wish to study 8

Operationalization & Measurement  Operationalize your concepts  How do you expect to ‘observe’ your defined concept in operation so you can measure it?  Eg. Intervention addressing Fear and Violent Crime:  How will you operationalize fear of crime as you have defined it?  Operationalization - Self-reports from residents in an area  Measurement - Questionnaire item: how safe do you feel in your house, downtown at night, etc.  How will you operationalize violent crime?  Operationalization – incidents involving inter-personal violence in public places  Measure - Official QPS records of reported violent crime incidents in South Brisbane 9

Progression of measurement steps Conceptualization Conceptual definition Operational definition Measurements in the real world 10

Class Discussion Round  What are the key concepts in your research evaluation question?  How will you define these concepts?  How do you think you might operationalize these concepts in order to measure them? 11

Next Week  Assessment 1 is due !!! 12