Experimental operationalism

At the beginning of the planning process, it has to be clarified which questions should be answered by the study. In most cases, the research questions are rather qualitative, unspecific statements than precise algebraic formulations. Hence, such statements have to be operationalized into mathematically manageable terms, l.e. measures have to be defined describing the aspects of the system under study that should be investigated. Such measures are called variables. In the context of experimental studies variables have a lot of attributes depending on their purposes. Table 4.9 shows an overview on the most common attributes of variables. 

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