The document discusses measurement concepts in social work research, including the operationalization of variables, types of measurements (nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio), and treatment fidelity. It emphasizes the importance of using standardized measures for reliability and accuracy, along with ways to access free measures and the role of agency records in data collection. Key aspects include ensuring proper training and adherence to treatment protocols to maintain internal validity.

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