Social Science Concepts and Measurement

A fully revised edition of the classic reference on concepts and their role in social science research

This completely revised edition of Social Science Concepts and Measurement offers an updated look at the theory and methodology of concepts for the social sciences. Emphasizing that most concepts are multilevel and multidimensional, this amended edition continues to bring the qualitative and quantitative closer together, with new chapters devoted to scaling, aggregation, and the methodological links between the semantics of concepts and numeric measures. In addition, this book stresses that concepts are used for description and causal inference, and contain normative judgments.

Initial chapters focus on conceptualization, followed by chapters on issues of measurement. The textbook examines concepts in the international arena (such as the global performance indicators used by international organizations like the UN and the World Bank), as well as classic paired concepts such as poverty-wealth, democracy-authoritarianism, and war-peace. Additionally, it explores such topics as typologies, hybrid concepts, and how complex concepts constitute complex theories. The volume serves as a guide to the methodology of concepts in the classroom and is accompanied by more than two hundred exercises. Social Science Concepts and Measurement is an indispensable resource for graduate students and scholars.