The technique of developing measurement tools involves a four-stage process, consisting of the following:
- Concept development;
- Specification of concept dimensions;
- Selection of indicators; and
- Formation of index.
The first and foremost step is that of concept development which means that the researcher should arrive at an understanding of the major concepts pertaining to his study. This step of concept development is more apparent in theoretical studies than in the more pragmatic research, where the fundamental concepts are often already established.
The second step requires the researcher to specify the dimensions of the concepts that he developed in the first stage. This task may either be accomplished by deduction i.e., by adopting a more or less intuitive approach or by empirical correlation of the individual dimensions with the total concept and/or the other concepts. For instance, one may think of several dimensions such as product reputation, customer treatment, corporate leadership, concern for individuals, sense of social responsibility and so forth when one is thinking about the image of a certain company.
Once the dimensions of a concept have been specified, the researcher must develop indicators for measuring each concept element. Indicators are specific questions, scales, or other devices by which respondent‘s knowledge, opinion, expectation, etc., are measured. As there is seldom a perfect measure of a concept, the researcher should consider several alternatives for the purpose. The use of more than one indicator gives stability to the scores and it also improves their validity.
The last step is that of combining the various indicators into an index, i.e., formation of an index. When we have several dimensions of a concept or different measurements of a dimension, we may need to combine them into a single index. One simple way for getting an overall index is to provide scale values to the responses and then sum up the corresponding scores. Such an overall index would provide a better measurement tool than a single indicator because of the fact that an ―individual indicator has only a probability relation to what we really want to know.‖ This way we must obtain an overall index for the various concepts concerning the research study.
