ABSTRACT
A variable is a piece of information about how participants differ from one another. Each variable is composed of two or more categories. For example, the categories for the variable gender are male and female. Many concepts in social and behavioral research are not as easily translated into variables as is gender. Operationalization refers to the process of putting a concept into measurable form. For example, the dimension of friendly co-workers suggests information could be obtained about the number of times the respondent interacts with co-workers on the job or after work, the type or quality of these interactions, whether co-workers volunteer to share heavy workloads, whether co-workers seem genuinely interested in the respondent as a person, and so forth. The researcher must decide which concepts will be selected and how they will be measured. The subjects’ visual behavior was recorded by two observers stationed behind a one-way mirror, one facing each subject.
