Activity 4 case study
Activity 4.4 - Case Study - Measurement of Variables - Operational Definitions
I
Measurement is the assignment of numbers to characteristics (or attributes) of objects according to a pre-specified set of rules. Describe the object and characteristics of Syafiq’s study.
The object of the study is to help the Standard Asian Merchant Banks SP department understand how, and to what extent, the customers use the website and how it can be simplified in order to reduce the number of help calls associated with it.
The author of the study, Syafiq, must decide which characteristics of the study are likely to be relevant to users of the review. The characteristics of this study are Information Quality, System Quality, Interactivity and System design Quality.
The measurement of more abstract and subjective characteristics (or attributes - such for instance the attributes in Syafiq’s study) is more difficult than the measurement of other, more tangible attributes such as weight, length, gender, age, and marital status. Why is that?
The abstract and subjective characteristics of the study fall under the System design quality and Satisfaction with the website. The attributes of the two characteristics include visual appeal, innovativeness, image consistency and satisfaction with the website. All of these attributes are subjective to the person viewing the website. For instance, an older test subject may think the website is modern and very up-to-date, while a younger test subject may see it as tired, or old, technology. The questions on the review are directed to the customer’s opinion of the website and will vary from one to another.
One way of tapping more abstract and subjective attributes is operationalizing these attributes.
What is operationalization?
Shuttleworth (2014) defines Operationalization as “the process of strictly defining variables into measurable factors. The process defines “fuzzy concepts” and allows them to be
I
Measurement is the assignment of numbers to characteristics (or attributes) of objects according to a pre-specified set of rules. Describe the object and characteristics of Syafiq’s study.
The object of the study is to help the Standard Asian Merchant Banks SP department understand how, and to what extent, the customers use the website and how it can be simplified in order to reduce the number of help calls associated with it.
The author of the study, Syafiq, must decide which characteristics of the study are likely to be relevant to users of the review. The characteristics of this study are Information Quality, System Quality, Interactivity and System design Quality.
The measurement of more abstract and subjective characteristics (or attributes - such for instance the attributes in Syafiq’s study) is more difficult than the measurement of other, more tangible attributes such as weight, length, gender, age, and marital status. Why is that?
The abstract and subjective characteristics of the study fall under the System design quality and Satisfaction with the website. The attributes of the two characteristics include visual appeal, innovativeness, image consistency and satisfaction with the website. All of these attributes are subjective to the person viewing the website. For instance, an older test subject may think the website is modern and very up-to-date, while a younger test subject may see it as tired, or old, technology. The questions on the review are directed to the customer’s opinion of the website and will vary from one to another.
One way of tapping more abstract and subjective attributes is operationalizing these attributes.
What is operationalization?
Shuttleworth (2014) defines Operationalization as “the process of strictly defining variables into measurable factors. The process defines “fuzzy concepts” and allows them to be
References: Cheung, Christy M.K. and Matthew K.O. Lee (2005), “The Asymmetric Effect of Website Attribute Performance on Satisfaction: An Empirical Study,” in proceedings of the 38th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 1-10. Hernandez, Bianca, Julio Jimenez and Jose M. Martin (2009), “Key website factors in e- business strategy,” International Journal of Information Management, 29 (5), 362-71. McKinney, Vicki, Kanghyun Yoon and Fatemeh M. Zahedi (2002), “The Measurement of Web-Customer Satisfaction: An Expectation and Disconfirmation Approach,” Information Systems Research, 13 (3), 296-315. Muylle, Steve, Rudy Moenaert and Marc Despontin (2004), “The conceptualization and empirical validation of web site user satisfaction,” Information & Management, 41, 543-60. Shuttleworth, M. (2014). Explorable Psychology Experiments. Operationalization. Retrieved on November 15, 2014 from https://explorable.com/operationalization Sekaran, U., & Bougie, R. (2013). Research methods for business: A skill building approach (6th ed.). Chichester, United Kingdom: Wiley. ISBN: 978-1-119-94225-2.