Tamika hypothesizes that women are more helpful than men. She decides to conduct an experiment to see if she's right. She goes t
o the crowded food court and deliberately drops her notebook. She then notes whether the person standing closest to her helps her pick up her papers and whether the person is male or female. What is the operational definition of "helpful" in Tamika's study?
The operational definition of "helpful" in Tamika's study is the person that helps her pick up her papers.
Explanation:
In social research, the variable that the researcher wants to study has to have a conceptual and an operational definition. The conceptual definition is the definition you would normally find in a dictionary and it explains how the what the concept means and how it relates to other constructs. The operational concept explains how the researcher is going to measure it, how that concept can take place in reality.
In Tamika's study, to measure the concept "helpull" she is going to measure how many people help her pick up her papers, this is the operational concept since it is how she is going to measure if women are more helpfull than men.
