A presentation for Research in Clinical Social Work Practice, Virginia Commonwealth University, on Measurement

1. Measurement
Jacqueline Corcoran
Virginia Commonwealth
University
From: Social Work Research Skills Workbook, Corcoran &
Secret, 2013, Oxford
http://www.jacquelinecorcoran.com/

2. Measurement
 Concepts: ideas
 Operationalized: how concepts are
translated into numerical terms

3. Defining Variables
 Independent:
 What we want to study for its impact
 In intervention research: what we
manipulate
 Dependent:
 The result, outcome
 Changes as a result of the action of the
independent variable

4. Levels of measurement
 Nominal
 categories, exhaustiveness and mutually exclusivity
 Questions:
 Does this fall into a category?
 What category does this fall into?
 Ordinal
 can be logically rank-ordered
 differences between ranks can’t be quantified
 Questions
 Can I place these items in an approximate order?
 Interval
 the distance separating attributes has meaning but no real zero
 Questions:
 Can I place this on a scale that is very exact and precise?
 Ratio
 the distance separating attributes has meaning and a real zero
 Can I place this on a scale that is very exact and precise, AND has an
absolute value?

5. Assigning Values to Variables
 Nominal: numerical values are assigned
arbitrarily
 Ordinal: use numbers that symbolize the
levels
 Interval and ratio: use the actual value.

6. Treatment Fidelity
 refers to how faithfully we have
implemented the intervention
 Internal validity
 Includes proper training and
supervision and examination of their
work in sessions to ascertain that it
sufficiently meets the standards and
tenants of that particular treatment as
it was designed.
 Manualized treatment (treatment that
follows a strict protocol)

7. Reasons to use standardized
measures
 You will not be able to standardize a new
instrument
 Scoring and their interpretation
 Too many statistical tests
 Not re-inventing the wheel

8. Ways to find free measures
 Find out if your agency has purchased a
measure for its use.
 Contact the creator of a measure and
request permission to use the measure for
educational purposes.
 Bibliographies
 Fischer and Corcoran (2007a, 2007b)
 Corcoran and Hozack (2010)
 For strengths-based measures and how to
access them, see Early and Newsome
(2004).

9. Agency Records
 Example 8.4 for key outcomes
 Certain types of agencies routinely collect
certain information that can be used for
student projects