Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

SOME RECENT CONCEPTIONS OF OPERATIONALISM AND OPERATIONALIZING

SOME RECENT CONCEPTIONS OF OPERATIONALISM AND OPERATIONALIZING SOME RECENT CONCEPTIONS OF OPERATIONALISM AND OPERATIONALIZING*) by PAUL MARSHALL I. Introduction While operationalism, as a distinct view within the philosophy of science, has largely died out, the influence of operationalist views still continues within the social sciences. This is particularly the case in texts purporting to be guides for empirical research. The purpose of this paper is to trace this development and to unravel something of the conflation of operationalist views with methods of research which might otherwise be unproblematic. The particular area which will be considered is political science. This is for two reasons. First, this is the area in which I am most familiar with such methods. Second, as political science has been slower than other social sciences in following a road to increased quantification, the justifications offered for such procedures in this field must necessarily be less compact, hence the structure of the argument can be more easily discerned than in another field where it tends to be assumed rather than argued. Despite this particular focus, most of the comments made in this paper are also applicable to other social sciences. II. The Development of Operationalism One of the intriguing features of operationalism is http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Philosophia Reformata Brill

SOME RECENT CONCEPTIONS OF OPERATIONALISM AND OPERATIONALIZING

Philosophia Reformata , Volume 44 (1): 46 – Feb 20, 1979

Loading next page...
 
/lp/brill/some-recent-conceptions-of-operationalism-and-operationalizing-HnpLqcQIDd

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© Copyright 1979 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
0031-8035
eISSN
2352-8230
DOI
10.1163/22116117-90001327
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

SOME RECENT CONCEPTIONS OF OPERATIONALISM AND OPERATIONALIZING*) by PAUL MARSHALL I. Introduction While operationalism, as a distinct view within the philosophy of science, has largely died out, the influence of operationalist views still continues within the social sciences. This is particularly the case in texts purporting to be guides for empirical research. The purpose of this paper is to trace this development and to unravel something of the conflation of operationalist views with methods of research which might otherwise be unproblematic. The particular area which will be considered is political science. This is for two reasons. First, this is the area in which I am most familiar with such methods. Second, as political science has been slower than other social sciences in following a road to increased quantification, the justifications offered for such procedures in this field must necessarily be less compact, hence the structure of the argument can be more easily discerned than in another field where it tends to be assumed rather than argued. Despite this particular focus, most of the comments made in this paper are also applicable to other social sciences. II. The Development of Operationalism One of the intriguing features of operationalism is

Journal

Philosophia ReformataBrill

Published: Feb 20, 1979

There are no references for this article.