Professor Spence decided to define socioeconomic status as a combination of income and education. Spence then determined the questions to be asked in a survey and the categories of responses. Spence was assigning socioeconomic status:
A)a nominal definition only.
B)an operational and a real definition.
C)a real definition only.
D)a nominal and a real definition.
E)a nominal and an operational definition.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

By defining socioeconomic status as a combination of income and education and then determining the specific questions and response categories for a survey, Professor Spence is operationalizing the concept. This means Spence is providing a clear, practical method for measuring socioeconomic status in a research context, which is what an operational definition does. A nominal definition simply assigns a name to a concept without detailing how to measure it, which is not the case here.

Professor Spence Decided to Define Socioeconomic Status as a Combination