Phase 3 Prep

Operationalization

1. Write your hypotheses.

Main Hypothesis:

Alternative (Rival) 1:

Alternative (Rival) 2:

-Make sure to specify direction.

e.g. Main Hypothesis: Women are more likely to be Democrats than are men.

The following is an example of a hypothesis without a direction:

Main: Gender influences PID.

2. Describe how you are operationalizing your concepts.

a) Make a table for each variable. The first table should be about Y.

Example:

Variable name	Grass
Variable label	Should marijuana be made legal?
Description of categories	1) Legal 2) Not leagal 0) 88) 89) Missing {Note: For GSS and NES, the description should include response categories.}
Variable type	Dependent
Level of measurement	Ordinal
Used to test	Main, Rival 1, and Rival 2

3. Repeat the above for the main independent variable

a) Example

Variable name	Age
Variable label	Respondents’ age
Description of categories	98) and 99) missing
Variable type	Independent
Level of measurement	Interval/ratio
Used to test	Main hypothesis

3. Repeat the above for the second independent variable (rival 1)

4. Repeat the above for the third independent variable (rival 2)

Note:

You should have four tables (tables for Y, X1, X2, and X3).

You can only use a single dataset.