Operational Definition Swap

Overview

The goal of this activity is to introduce the concept of operational definitions, and get practice on developing them.

To understand how Psychologists work to quantitatively measure seemingly abstract constructs
To understand what makes a good operational definition and be able to develop one.

Introduce the topic: “How do psychologists’ study seemingly abstract concepts like “aggression”, or “happiness”?
- Encourage students to give their ideas, and discuss before moving on.
Divide the students into groups.
Have each group write on a piece of paper, one research topic that is interesting to them, ask them to do it as just one or a few words.
We then surprise them by having them have to swap topics with another group.
- This bit can be done by just handing out the pieces of paper to a group nearby but I think it can be more fun and give a greater sense of ownership of the classroom if you ask them to crumple up the paper into a ball and throw it randomly across the room, having students grab each others paper balls.
The students are now tasked with coming up with an operational definition for the topic they received, reminder them to consider:
- How can you make this “topic” measurable?
  (Ex: Our operational definitions for “Aggression”)
- What would be the hypothesis of an experiment that uses this?
  (Ex: Being hungry increases aggression)
- What would be dependent and independent variables in your study?
  (Ex: Aggression, Hunger)
- What sort of inferences can be drawn from potential results? What would be limitations?
Have them present to the whole class what their group came up with.

An excellent opportunity afforded by having students swap prompts is to ask them to comment on the way that the group that ended up with their topic approached the subject:
- Was is the same approach they were envisioning?
- Were they “satisfied” with what they did? Do they think it would address their initial curiosity?
- What were they initially planning to do with it?
Designing a valid study requires careful attention, starting from how the topic is even measured. When interpreting the outcome of a study, careful attention to its design, how variables are measured, and how the results can be interpreted is critical. Defining how a given construct is to be measured is an important step in this process, especially in Psychology.

The prompts for what to do once they receive a topic can be expanded or reduced, depending on how much you want to focus only on the aspect of the operational definition, and experiment design.
This activity works well in any topic, not just in Psychology.

Circulate, eavesdropping on tables and questioning them as needed to consider important design issues. Students may not get through all considerations, and this is okay!

I designed this as the very first activity for an introductory Psychology course.

I think this activity works well as an “ice-breaker” of sorts, especially for first year students. Or maybe even children in schools, if properly adapted.