Variables, Operationalization

Concepts and Conceptualizations

A concept is a way of summarizing and classifying ideas and observations. Media use, for example, is a concept designed to capture the idea of how individuals interact with media and all related dimensions that accompany this behavior. To effectively guide research, a concept requires an explicit and consistent definition. The concept of media use could signal a variety of ways in which individuals use media, ranging from less deliberate forms of use (e.g., passively watching a television segment on cancer prevention) to more active forms of media consumption (e.g., actively searching for information about cancer treatments). As such, a researcher interested in studying media use would need to consider whether to use the overarching concept of media use or a more specific subconcept (e.g., video-game playing) for empirical examination.

Since concepts are abstract in nature, they require further specification in order to move them from abstract ideas to more concrete terms that can be examined in research. Specifically, concepts need to be expressed more concretely in order to provide context for making sense of observations or testing hypotheses. This means that researchers need to use comparable definitions of concepts across research in order to draw meaningful conclusions about findings and identify common patterns. The process of converting abstract theory into concrete ideas is known as conceptualization. For example, one way to conceptualize a concept such as information seeking is to define it as a behavior characterized by purposeful attempts to procure information about a topic of interest to the information seeker. One question raised with this concept is whether this [Page 1855]behavior might also include the acquisition of information using more passive efforts. In the case of information seeking, a helpful conceptualization should delineate which types of behaviors constitute active and passive information seeking. Proper conceptualization thus provides clear boundaries for dimensions that are included within the definition while excluding dimensions that fall beyond its scope.

To arrive at a thorough conceptualization of a concept, it is important to identify and include all relevant dimensions of that concept. Challenges arise with concepts that are multifaceted and comprise several dimensions. For example, the concept of media exposure in recent years has received some debate as various conceptualizations have at times produced different results in terms of detecting and linking media to significant effects on outcomes of interest. More specifically, the existing body of research on media effects contains conceptualizations ranging from mere exposure (e.g., the number of hours spent listening to the radio) to ones that include dimensions for audience involvement and attention paid to certain types of content (e.g., how closely individuals pay attention to news about climate change). This has made it difficult to summarize the literature on media effects. Efforts to organize and provide clear and consistent definitions for concepts under study can help reduce these obstacles and facilitate steps such as operationalization that follow in the scientific process.

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