If a study is “about memory,” where is the memory?
Psychology investigates attributes you cannot place on a desk. You can still study how much of their memory people retain after sleep, and how a name comes back to mind. The object of that investigation is a construct: a hypothesized attribute of a person or process, treated as real enough to study even though it is not directly observable (Cozby & Bates, 2020). Memory, attention, extraversion, and stress are standard examples.
The construct is inferred from what people do, say, or produce in a procedure. Figure 4.1 lists one example of each, still using memory as the construct under investigation.
| Inferred from | Example (construct: memory) |
|---|---|
| what people do | After sleep, they recall names aloud when prompted. |
| what people say | They report that a name is on the tip of the tongue, then that it has come back to mind. |
| what people produce | They write the names they retrieve on a sheet. |
A questionnaire is apparatus. If the paper concerns loneliness, loneliness is the construct. A heart-rate monitor is apparatus. If the paper concerns stress, stress is the construct. A title that names the construct tells the reader what the authors intend to study. The title does not, by itself, constitute a measurement. How a construct is specified as a procedure — its operational definition — is the next article.
References
- Cozby, P. C., & Bates, S. C. (2020). Methods in behavioral research (14th ed.). McGraw-Hill.
Image and media credits
- Top image. A dim study desk with stacks of papers under a green lamp. It sets the scene for this lesson on what a construct is. Source: Created for this site with Grok Imagine (xAI), an AI image generator. License: Original image made for mattgaugerx.com.
