Chapter 5  / Measurement Web Resources

Examples of Operational Definitions

	General Social Survey Documentation
	Select “BROWSE VARIABLES,” then “Subject Index.” Now by clicking on concepts in the subject index, one can see the GSS questions that have been used to operationalize everything from abortion to mental health to welfare.

The State of the World’s Children 2009

This page provides links to statistical tables with various economic and social indicators on children’s well-being from countries and territories around the world. Footnotes to the tables contain the main data sources and definitions of the indicators. Among the indicators in the table on “education,” for example, are adult literacy rate, net primary school attendance, and primary school entrants who reach the last grade of primary school. Demographic indicators include crude death rate, crude birth rate, life expectancy, and fertility rate.

	Statistical Abstract: State Rankings
	This page from the Census Bureau’s 2009 Statistical Abstract contains links to statistics and state rankings on a variety of aggregate measures such as the violent crime rate, unemployment rate, doctors per 100,000 population, median household income, and percent of persons below poverty level. Table footnotes contain links to information about definitions and data sources.

Constructing Scales and Assessing Reliability and Validity

	Guide to Scales and Their Construction
	From the research pages of the PAIR Project, a longitudinal study of marital couples, this link describes measures of love, maintenance, ambivalence, and conflict. Information is provided on contents of each measure or scale, reliability estimates, and validity statistics.