OVERVIEW

Although what political scientists care about is discovering whether causal relationships exist between concepts, what we actually examine is statistical associations between variables. Therefore it is critical that we have a clear understanding of the concepts that we care about so we can measure them in a valid and reliable way. In this chapter we focus on several examples from the political science literature, such as the concept of political tolerance. We know that political tolerance and intolerance is a “real” thing – that it exists to varying degrees in the hearts and minds of people. But how do we go about measuring it? What are the implications of poor measurement?

WHY MEASUREMENT MATTERS

We have emphasized the role of theory in political science. That is, we care about causal relationships between concepts that interest us as political scientists. At this point, you are hopefully starting to develop theories of your own about politics. If these original theories are in line with the rules of the road that we laid out in Chapter 1, they will be causal, general, and parsimonious.