A social research methods class wants to study smoking. First the professor asks how many people in the class are smokers. Two p
eople say yes. Then she asks how many people have smoked a cigarette in the past week, and ten people say yes. From this the class decides that, for the purposes of its survey, a smoker will be anyone who has had a cigarette in the past week and currently owns a pack of cigarettes. This is a(n):
Operational description refers to <em>an accurate statement of how a theory variable is converted into a measured variable.</em>
Only once an appropriate functional definition has been established can work be carried out.
The conceptual variable may be too vague in some cases to be operationalized, and the variable may not be operationalized in other cases because the adequate technology has not been created.
