Take on me-asurement (take measurement on): Teaching measurement and coding with one-hit wonders

Abstract

Measurement in the social sciences involves assigning values to particular empirical cases and plays a vital role in the research process, but it can be tricky to teach. Unless an undergraduate social sciences research methods course includes the collection of original data, many of the issues of measurement can seem abstract and arcane to students. To help illustrate how a social science researcher goes from a conceptualization to assigning values to cases, I developed a lecture that centers on the question “which artists are one-hit wonders?” I used the rules developed by Chris Molanphy to help students see how we can develop applicable methods for any possible case and make a measure that is both reliable and valid. The example also helps illustrate the difference between categorical and numerical variables by comparing the categorization of artists as one-hit wonders and the relative numerical value of the chart position of the artist’s most successful song.