Establishing operational definitions in management research

In defining the problem you may use certain words or items that are difficult to measure and/or the understanding of which may vary from respondent to respondent. In a research study it is important to develop, define or establish a set of rules, indicators or yardsticks in order to establish clearly the meaning of such words/items. It is sometimes also important to define clearly the study population from which you need to obtain the required information. When you define concepts that you plan to use either in your research problem and/or in identifying the study population in a measurable form, they are called working definitions or operational definitions. You must understand that these working definitions that you develop are only for the purpose of your study and could be quite different to legal defini­tions, or those used by others. As the understanding of concepts can vary markedly from person to person, your working definitions will inform your readers what exactly you mean by the concepts that you have used in your study. The following example studies help to explain this. The main objectives are:

1. To find out the number of children living below the poverty line in Australia.
2. To ascertain the impact of immigration on family roles among
3. To measure the effectiveness of a retraining programme designed to help young people.

Although these objectives clearly state the main thrust of the studies, they are not specific in terms of the main variables to be studied and the study populations. You cannot count the number of children living below the poverty line until you decide what constitutes the pov­erty line and how to determine it; you cannot find out the impact of immigration on family roles unless you identify which roles constitute family roles; and you cannot measure effec­tiveness until you define what effectiveness is. On the other hand, it is equally important to decide exactly what you mean by ‘children’, ‘immigrants’ or ‘young’. Up to what age will you consider a person to be a child (i.e. 5, 10, 15 or 18)? Who would you consider young? A per­son 15 years of age, 20, 25 or 30? Who would you consider to be an immigrant? A person who immigrated 40, 20 or 5 years ago? In addition, are you going to consider immigrants from every country or only a few? In many cases you need to develop operational definitions for the variables and concepts you are studying and for the population that becomes the source of the information for your study. Table 4.2 lists the concepts and the population groups to be operationalised for the above examples.

In a research study you need to define these clearly in order to avoid ambiguity and confu­sion. This is achieved through the process of developing operational/working definitions. You need to develop operational definitions for the major concepts you are using in your study and develop a framework for the study population enabling you to select appropriate respondents.

Operational definitions may differ from day-to-day meanings as well as dictionary or legal definitions. These meanings may not be helpful in identifying either your study population or the concepts you are studying. Though in daily life you often use words such as ‘children’, ‘youth’ and ‘immigrant’ loosely, you need to be more specific when using them in a research study. You should work through your own definitions.

Operational definitions give an operational meaning to the study population and the con­cepts used. It is only through making your procedures explicit that you can validly describe, explain, verify and test. It is important to remember that there are no rules for deciding if an operational definition is valid. Your arguments must convince others about the appropriateness of your definitions.

Source: Kumar Ranjit (2012), Research methodology: a step-by-step guide for beginners, SAGE Publications Ltd; Third edition.