Social Science Concepts and Measurement: New and Completely Revised Edition

by Gary Goertz

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

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 revised 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, it 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 and wealth, democracy and authoritarianism, and war and 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.

336 pages, Paperback

Published September 29, 2020

About the author

Gary Goertz is professor of political science and peace studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. His many methods books include A Tale of Two Cultures and Multimethod Research, Causal Mechanisms, and Case Studies (both Princeton).