{"id":50927,"date":"2012-09-14T11:20:14","date_gmt":"2012-09-14T16:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=50927"},"modified":"2013-02-11T03:38:14","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T08:38:14","slug":"measuring-generosity-how-definitions-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/09\/14\/measuring-generosity-how-definitions-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Measuring Generosity: How Definitions Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m supervising senior theses this semester and so I have to be a super stickler about something that makes most students’ eyes roll back in their heads: operationalization. \u00a0Wait! \u00a0Keep reading!<\/p>\n

The term refers to a careful definition of the variable you’re measuring and it can have dramatic influences on what you find. \u00a0Dmitriy T.C. sent in a great example. \u00a0It involves whether you include church donations in your definition of “charity.” \u00a0 Friendly Atheist<\/a> breaks it down.<\/p>\n

If you include church donations, the South appears to be the most generous U.S. region:\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But if you don’t, everyone looks a whole lot stingier and the Northeast comes out on top:\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

All you budding sociologists out there remember! \u00a0Think long and hard about how to define what you’re measuring. \u00a0It can make a huge difference in your results.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m supervising senior theses this semester and so I have to be a super stickler about something that makes most students’ eyes roll back in their heads: operationalization. \u00a0Wait! \u00a0Keep reading! The term refers to a careful definition of the variable you’re measuring and it can have dramatic influences on what you find. \u00a0Dmitriy T.C. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[274,42],"class_list":["post-50927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-methodsuse-of-data","tag-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50927"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51047,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50927\/revisions\/51047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}