Operationalize This

Operationalizing Hypotheses

A hypothesis cannot be tested unless each of its terms or concepts can be translated into a measurable variable or a concrete procedure.

E.g. Listening to Mozart makes people smarter.

Concept	Possible operationalization
“smarter”	will score higher on the Stanford-Binet IQ test
“Mozart”	all sound recordings that claim the music is composed by W.A. Mozart
“listening”	conscious while being exposed to 20 minutes of sound recordings
“people”	2nd-year undergraduate music students from the Ohio State University

Notice that operationalizing a hypothesis never captures the full breadth of the original claim. In the above case, the hypothesis has been transformed to something much more narrow:

When awake 2nd-year OSU music students are exposed to 20 minutes of sound recordings of music deemed to be composed by W.A. Mozart they will score higher on the Stanford-Binet IQ test when compared with students who had not been exposed to such music.

Whether some statement is viewed as a hypothesis or a conjecture depends on whether its terms can be operationalized.

Operationalize the following hypotheses:

1. Women like to dance more than men.

2. The progression from dominant to subdominant is more common in Reggae music than other musics.