The Importance of Common Metrics for Advancing Social Science Theory and Research A Workshop Summary (2011) / Chapter Skim
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4 Social Science Constructs
4 Social Science Constructs
Pages 53-70
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From page 53... ...
The examples illustrate a number of reasons for the lack of a standard measure: paucity of scholarly interest, balkanization of fields, sparse data, and politics. Consideration was given to rethinking incentives for researchers to work collaboratively on common measures that then improve and extend discourse.
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From page 54... ...
Bradburn recalled Pollak's mention of disability and marital status as examples of concepts that could be defined for a scientific use in order to fit into a theory or be used to make predictions, or they could be related to policy needs or social descriptive purposes. He said that concepts can be characterized by explicit definition (e.g., formulas, such as income = consumption + savings)
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From page 55... ...
First, common metrics are possible and desired if the definitions, representations, and procedures are all well specified and appropriate. Second, when concepts are used for different purposes, so that the definitions, representations, or procedures are different -- or all of the above -- then there will be difficulty getting to common measures.
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From page 56... ...
He then reflected on lessons learned from the fact that, for the past half-century, the United States has had an officially sanctioned standardized measure of this particular construct, which forms the basis of many programs. He began by tracing five steps to measuring poverty: 1.
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From page 57... ...
to determine eligibility for social programs. Standardization makes sense for the third purpose because of the importance placed on equitable treatment in eligibility.
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From page 58... ...
of the individual, socioeconomic status and prestige, consumption practices and leisure activities, and the social and cultural milieu in which he or she lives. Grusky considered it a potentially useful division of labor for economics to focus on economic mobility and for sociology to focus on social mobility.
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From page 59... ...
For example, the attack on the World Trade Center might gener ate family discussion about motivation and cultural differences in a family of sociologists, but discussion about structural integrity and construction materials is more likely to occur in a family of engineers. Putting aside narrow-gauge methodological problems for now, Grusky underscored the primary need to overcome two main structural obstacles to developing a national protocol for measuring intergenerational mobility: the balkanization of economics and sociology traditions and sparse data.
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From page 60... ...
Bradburn added that the more one defines a concept precisely for scientific purposes, the further it can depart from its originally intended meaning and the rich everyday concept that people think it means. On one hand, with respect to poverty, Cartwright suggested, it might be more helpful to simply have the array of poverty definitions available if the ordinary concept of poverty is not described properly by any single one of them.
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From page 61... ...
rising obesity rates, and (3) the recent economic crisis, which is attributable in part to excessive borrowing
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From page 62... ...
Building on earlier studies on children's ability to self-regulate by delaying gratification, Walter Mischel and colleagues (1989) found that preschool delay time predicted a number of fairly consequential outcomes, including academic and social competence, coping ability, and personality characteristics in adolescence (e.g., greater attentiveness, planfulness, and reasoning ability)
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From page 63... ...
The advantages of rating scale measures include their focus specifically on self-regulation and the frequent use of multiple subscales that allow for fine-grained assessment of the construct. Personality inventories, generally for adolescents and adults, were not originally designed to measure selfregulation, but they often include subscales addressing it (conscientiousness and constraint being two personality dimensions that are clearly relevant)
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From page 64... ...
the construct might be more likely to be assessed or discussed routinely outside the academy, thus drawing social psychologists more into discussions of social issues and into informing policy development and evaluation. Hoyle recognized that there are many reasons why standardization may not be a good idea at a particular time.
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From page 65... ...
There has been little progress to change this measure -- despite very good work by NRC and other researchers demonstrating all the pitfalls of the current measures and other ways to measure poverty better -- not only in large part because of inertia, but also because there has been no compelling reason to adopt an alternative. One of the areas in which Maynard hopes common metrics will be developed is what she termed 21st-century skills, which are skills needed to improve the labor market readiness of those at the bottom of the skills distribution and national productivity.
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From page 66... ...
It is an umbrella concept that, for scientific, political, and practical purposes, would probably need to be greatly refined and tailored to the intended use. For Maynard, one of the implications from this meeting is that it would be desirable to embark on a strategy of encouraging and facilitating the use of common metrics in cases in which there are well-established, meaningful metrics or when such measures could be constructed and made accessible with reasonable effort.
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From page 67... ...
Turning to the notion of intergenerational mobility, Pollak observed that much of the early literature on intergenerational mobility assumed that people were raised in two-parent families, and the main focus was on transmission from fathers to sons. This formulation is no longer appropriate in the context of changing family structures, for example the growing prevalence of female-headed families, nonmarital fertility, and the effects of immigration.
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From page 68... ...
Maynard said she is aware of a major ongoing initiative of the Department of Education for a compendium of measures; other federal agencies also support similar efforts. George Bohrnstedt also thinks that federal agencies can be influential in pushing for cooperative agreements and use of common measures.
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From page 69... ...
Grusky contended that the case for standardization could be made more forcefully, particularly in social mobility. He noted that the Pew Charitable Trusts is supporting an economic mobility project and is actively publicizing the results.
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From page 70... ...
He expressed frustration that Measuring Poverty, the work of NRC from 15 years ago, has not realized much traction. In survey data activities, Michael supported the idea of linking to administrative records, since this could reduce costs by reducing survey time and increase the size of the samples.
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