When a concept is very broad, serious consideration needs to be given to the possibility that it comprises underlying dimensions which reflect different aspects of the concept in question. Very often it is possible to specify those Table 4.1 Types of variable
Figure 4.1 Deciding the nature of a variable
dimensions on a priori grounds, so that possible dimensions are established in advance of the formation of indicators of the concept. There is much to recommend deliberation about the possibility of such underlying dimensions, since it encourages systematic reflection on the nature of the concept that is to be measured.
Lazarsfeld’s (1958) approach to the measurement of concepts viewed the search for underlying dimensions as an important ingredient. Figure 4.2 illustrates the steps that he envisaged. Initially, the researcher forms an image from a theoretical domain. This image reflects a number of common characteristics, as in the previous example of job satisfaction which denotes the tendency for people to have a distinctive range of experiences in relation to their jobs. Similarly, Hall (1968) developed the idea of ‘professionalism’ as a consequence of his view that members of professions have a distinctive constellation of attitudes to the nature of their work. In each case, out of this imagery stage, we see a concept starting to form. At the next stage, concept specification takes place, whereby the concept is developed to show whether it comprises different aspects or dimensions. This stage allows the complexity of the concept to be recognized. In Hall’s case, five dimensions of professionalism were proposed:
62 Concepts and their measurement
1 The use of the professional organization as a major reference This means that the professional organization and other members of the profession are the chief source of ideas and judgements for the professional in the context of his or her work.
2 A belief in service to the public According to this aspect, the profession is regarded as indispensable to society.
3 Belief in self-regulation This notion implies that the work of a professional can and should be judged only by other members of the profession, because only they are qualified to make appropriate judgements.
4 A sense of calling to the field The professional is someone who is dedicated to his or her work and would probably want to be a member of the profession even if material rewards were less.
5 Autonomy This final dimension suggests that professionals ought to be able to make decisions and judgements without pressure from either clients, the organizations in which they work, or any other non-members of the profession.
Not only is the concept specification stage useful in order to reflect and to capture the full complexity of concepts, but it also serves as a means of bridging the general formulation of concepts and their measurement, since the establishment of dimensions reduces the abstractness of concepts.
The next stage is the selection of indicators, in which the researcher searches for indicators of each of the dimensions. In Hall’s case, ten indicators of each dimension were selected. Each indicator entailed a statement in relation to which respondents had to answer whether they believed that it agreed Very Well, Well, Poorly, or Very Poorly in the light of how they felt and behaved as members of their profession. A neutral category was also provided. Figure 4.2 provides both the five dimensions of professionalism and one of the ten indicators for each dimension. Finally, Lazarsfeld proposed that the indicators need to be brought together through the formation of indices or scales. This stage can entail either of two possibilities. An overall scale could be formed which comprised all indicators relating to all dimensions. However, more frequently, separate scales are formulated for each dimension. Thus, in Hall’s research, the indicators relating to each dimension were combined to form scales, so that we end up with five separate scales of professionalism. As Hall shows, different professions exhibit different ‘profiles’ in respect of these dimensions—one may emerge as having high scores for dimensions 2, 3, and 5, moderate for 1, and low for 4, whereas other professions will emerge with different combinations.
In order to check whether the indicators bunch in the ways proposed by an a priori specification of dimensions, factor analysis, a technique that will be examined in Chapter 11, is often employed. Factor analysis allows the researcher to check whether, for example, all of the ten indicators developed to measure ‘autonomy’ are really related to each other and not to indicators that are supposed to measure other dimensions. We might find that an indicator
Figure 4.2
Concepts, dimensions and measur
ements Sour ces: Lazarsf eld (1 95 8); Hall (1 96 8); Sniz ek (1 97
64 Concepts and their measurement
that is supposed to measure autonomy seems to be associated with many of the various indicators of ‘belief in service to the public’, while one or two of the latter might be related to indicators which are supposed to denote ‘belief in self-regulation’, and so on. In fact, when such factor analysis has been conducted in relation to Hall’s professionalism scale, the correspondence between the five dimensions and their putative indicators has been shown to be poor (Snizek 1972; Bryman 1985). However, the chief point that should be recognized in the foregoing discussion is that the specification of dimensions for concepts is often an important step in the development of an operational definition.
Some measurement is carried out in psychology and sociology with little (if any) attention to the quest for dimensions of concepts. For example, the eighteen-item measure of job satisfaction developed by Brayfield and Rothe (1951), which was mentioned above, does not specify dimensions, though it is possible to employ factor analysis to search for de facto ones. The chief point that can be gleaned from this section is that the search for dimensions can provide an important aid to understanding the nature of concepts and that, when established on the basis of a priori reasoning, can be an important step in moving from the complexity and abstractness of many concepts to possible measures of them.