PURPOSE: The purpose of this exercise is to conceptualize and operationalize variables, and understand how conceptual and operational definitions impact the conclusions drawn about variables.
WRITING REQUIREMENTS: The essay should be 7 pages. APA formatting should be used throughout (cover page, running header, major heading, subheadings, in-text citations, and reference list). Any time you paraphrase or directly quote a source, in-text citations should be used. A full APA-formatted reference should be included at the end of the assignment.
The essay should include the following subheadings:
Definitions
Conceptualizes race
Operationalizes race
Census Bureau changes
How changes to variables affect conclusions
Reflection
INSTRUCTIONS: Make sure to follow the directions in order.
First, provide a definition of the terms: “conceptual definition” and “operational definition”.
Next, conceptualize and operationalize the variable “race.”
Read the Census Bureau’s report on race.
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2011/dec/c2010br-02.pdf.
Answer the following questions after reading the report:
What changes did the Bureau make to the conceptualization and operationalization of race in the 2010 census?
Why did the Bureau make these changes?
Could the difference in operationalization produce different conclusions about race?
Does the Bureau’s conceptualization and operationalization of race coincide with yours? If so, how? If not, what is different?
General requirements:
Submissions should be typed, double-spaced, 1″ margins, times new roman 12 pt font, and saved as .doc, .docx, .pdf.
Use APA format for citations and references
View the grading rubric so you understand how you will be assessed on this Assignment.
Disclaimer- Originality of attachments will be verified by Turnitin. Both you and your instructor will receive the results.
This course has “Resubmission” status enabled to help you if you realized you submitted an incorrect or blank file, or if you need to submit multiple documents as part of your Assignment. Resubmission of an Assignment after it is grades, to attempt a better grade, is not permitted.
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2011/dec/c2010br-02.pdf.
Conceptualization and Operationalization of Variables
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Conceptualization and Operationalization of Variables
Introduction
Social pundits coin the term conceptual as the visualization of an idea through the detailed analysis of primary and secondary variables that form a firm foundation for the actualization of the concepts. Operational refers to fully functioning activities of an organization/ variable/ network or an ecosystem. These concepts are related and interlinked as one serves the other parts and plays a crucial role in the other’s theroritization, application, and distribution.
Conceptualize race
Traditionally variables operate are an ever-changing landscape that depends on the social, economic, and political environment. In contemporary modern times, there is a massive influx of psychosocial, biosocial factors that alter the internal and external environments of the variables. According to the highly publicized 2010 census, there was a growing concern over the race and Hispanic set of questions asked to people living in the United States. According to the Office of Management and Budget, this was a federally engineered mandate that origin and race are two different concepts that operate independently through self-identification. As a result, the Federal issued a standard that the Census Bureau collects race and Hispanic origin data separately (United States Cansus Bureau).
Consequently the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) authorized Federal agencies to follow the new set of guidelines, whereby they could only use two sets of ethnicities: Hispanic or Latino. The questions were subdivided into four parts: Hispanic, Latino, Not Hispanic, and Latino. Initially, Hispanic is perceived as a heritage of a national group more than a race. From this perspective, the Hispanic origin is defined as the lineage, ancestral home of the person, parents before arriving in the United States. In this regard, people of Hispanic, Latino, Mexican or Spanish can identify as members of any race in the United States. These federal mandates were adapted to categorize the rapidly growing population into distinct categories to allow even distribution of resources and monitor population, economic, and social indices that are of paramount importance to achieving a healthy democracy and a vibrant economy. The conceptualization and opera ionization of a race in the 2010 census provided essential information that draws insights on the local distribution of our racially and ethnically diverse nation. Since becoming an independent state, racial and ethnic identities have become central in shaping people’s lives and experiences. However, these are sound systems that lay a firm foundation with long life consequences embedded in society for a long time. However, the conception of race and Hispanic origin has made significant steps in the censuses, and surveys can transform the social, political, and economic environment.
Operationalization of Race
Since the first U.S decennial census in 1790 inception of the Hispanic origin and race, there has been a rapid paradigm shift in social forces, modification of questionnaire design, an adjustment in household reports the race or Hispanic origin for household members. The 2010 census provides a rigid framework of race, and Hispanic origin is anonymized link data of over 162 million people for whom we have responses from the decade. One of the most critical mandates was operationalized in the wake of the 2010 census Bureau that was the revision of race and Hispanic origin to reflect the country’s diversity (Humes, Jones, & Ramire, 2011).
Generally, the 2010 census changed the immutable and lifelong nature of layout and the founding blocks of race and ethnicity’s. Revision of the Standards for the classification of Federal data on race and ethnicity became the framework upon which the office of management and budget sources population registers to account for the growing populations. Operationalization provides insightful data on population increase and the overall changes across all Native Hawaiians, Alaska Natives, American Indians, and other Pacific islanders. In essence, operationalization is crucial in the separation process of race and origin.
Census Bureau changes
In the wake of 1997, the Office of Management and Budget initiated the constitutional review of the existing mandates to allow a minimum of five categories on race in the census questionnaire. People were given the option to mark five races with an additional ‘some other races’ that allowed the people unable to identify as part of the listed five race categories. Subsequently, within the same year, OMB changed the Hispanic origin question in the 2010 census to showcase the difference between race and origin. The sentence composition of the question changed from whether this person of Spanish/Hispanic/Latino descent is Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin? In furtherance, the census provided no tips, clues, and instructions to guide the non-Hispanic respondents. They ultimately gave them the freedom to choose the best suitable option, such as the Yes, Hispanic, Spanish, and Latino sections of the census questionnaires comprised six Hispanic origin groups as Spaniard, Dominican, Nicaraguan, Colombian, Argentinean, Salvadoran, etc. With time the revolutionary changes are evident in the diverse racial identification such as the multiple-race groups and the single-race groups. Currently, there are more than 57 potential multiple-race combinations involving the preordained five OMB race categories and some other races (United States Cansus Bureau).
How changes to variables affect conclusions
Initially, there was a rapid change in the formatting of the data reports in the Office of Management and Budget. Still, the office provided stability among viable solutions to counter the immutable changes. The distinct categories in the revised mandate dedicate that all previous data be regrouped, rematches to align with the current data. Without a doubt, this had ripple effects on the final reports of the census. For example, there was no ideal reference from the previous census to compare the current statistics in the sixth category. However, a decade apart, changing variables showcase distant relationships underlying the increase, decrease of the variables over time. Technically the comparison forms the basis for social, economic, and political change. Ideally, census reports act as levers that determine the scale and speed of social shifters, economic indices, and political spectators. Therefore their constant variations have drastic effects on racial integration, providing resources to all individuals in the society. However, some social experts argue that the changing variables only exude a small net change that does not reflect the national groups. However, many researchers are reluctant that race and Hispanic origin data orchestrate the path to equity, freedom, and rights and mandates embedded on emanating reports on the census. Furthermore, they argue that it is a formidable task for the research to maintain equilibrium, drawing insights, viable and concrete solutions from the data. It constituently requires the research to consider response changes when analyzing the results (Sonya, Carolyn and Leticia).
Reflection
After an in-depth review of the evolution and genesis of the mandates governing the 2010 census, it is of paramount importance to reevaluate the key emerging concepts to cushion the variables against the ever-changing intersectional dynamic of race and origin identification. Although the United States is a mature economy, it requires a rigid framework to adequately balance its population with its resources which serves as the primary purpose of a census. The census will provide in-depth insights, comprehensive analysis of the population in terms of race, origin to identify the population’s needs and match them according to the resources available. Secondly, in collaboration with the census committees, the Office of Management and Bureau should evaluate the practicality of these variables in the social, economic and political climate of major players in society. In essence, what are the factors causing the response change, especially among Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and American Indians and Other Pacific Islanders? Notably, across the diverse types of response changes, the number of people joining each Hispanic group was almost the same size as people leaving the group.
With the increasing number of people reporting multiple races in the 2010 census, there is a drastic rise in diversity, reflecting massive change and deployment of rigid frameworks to prepare for the rapid changes. According to the Office of Management and Budget, the churning rate is ridiculously high and scales that will revolutionize modern-day population diversity. The ever-changing landscape of race will become versatile and become the backbone of the economy, politics, and society that a significant percent of the population will rely on. For decades there is growing concern about the high volatility and vulnerability to and the willingness for people to render their responses as Hispanic. There is a great contrast in the orientation and response rate between Hispanic and non-Hispanics. With high-level freedom to choose and embody a certain race without following a legal template to guide on the best race or origin, so much freedom to self-identify across a spectrum of up racial identities. From this perspective, there is a growing concern on the paradigm shift from Hispanic to some other race, such as changing from Hispanic white and changing and the successive change from Hispanic white to Hispanic. Generally, this signifies a high level of freedom. The revision of the OBM mandate has transformed the highly racially diverse country. For the longest time, people have felt entrapped into origins fixated as a minority while they are part of the majority in the community. At the same time, they have access to the same resources and opportunities. Social pundits state that there is a constraint on the achievability of this products and services. Most of the minority live in remote rural areas are cut off from Infrastructure and require a well-integrated model from the office of Management and Budget to ensure equal appropriation of resources. On the other, a significant percentage of the society embodies the vast Infrastructure confounded by the intersectional dynamic of freedom of rights and equal distribution of resources. Therefore as long as there is a gap in the economic, social and political well-being between the minority and the majority, there will always be a widening gap that augments the ever-changing landscape of the response change. In this regard it is evident that there is a discourse between the existing and emerging racial and ethnic variables used to violate, demean and other races based on their origin, lineage and ancestral home as the genesis of all the racially motivated hate crimes, insults, slurs and body shaming. With a comprehensive understanding of the underlying factors causing the rapid change, it is possible to implement changes to cultivate firm variables that operate within an ecosystem for a limited period to investigate their impact on the data linked reported produced annually to inform the population distribution in the country. Race and origin should not be used as basis for stigmatization, but as an element of political, social shift and economic growth
In surmise there is a growing concern in the metamorphosis of the racial and ethnic variables in the world of sociology. Some of the factors eliciting public controversy include the diverse ways how the conceptualization and operationalization of racial and ethnic data are presented in modern contemporary times. For example, the adoption of the revised mandates across all Federal states in America showcased little to no understanding of race and ethnicity as an aspect of research. Since the inception of the revised mandates, there was no mass education to equip the people with knowledge to select the ideal race or origin. Manifests and latent meanings provided the narrow and subjective meaning of race and origin in the contemporary modern world. However, the operationalization of race provides a firm foundation for a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the subtext adhering to the race and ethnicities in the United States. In furtherance, conceptualization and operationalization of race are an ongoing concept that can only be achieved with collaboration from all sectors in the economy.
References
Humes, K. R., Jones, N. A., & Ramirez, R. R. (2011). Overview of race and Hispanic origin: 2010 (pp. 1- 23). Washington, DC: US Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, US Census Bureau.
Sonya, Rastogi, et al. Results from America’s Churning Races: Race and Ethnic Response Changes Between the 2000 and 2010 Censuses. 2014. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/research-matters/2014/08/results-from-americas-churning-races-race-and-ethnic-response-changes-between-the-2000-and-2010-censuses.html. 2021.
United States Cansus Bureau. Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin:2010. 2011. https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2011/dec/c2010br-02.pdf. 2021.
