The Problem of Measurement and PerceptionThe AssignmentThe ConceptsThings to think aboutBoring detailsResourcesMIT OpenCourseWarehttp://ocw.mit.edu 11.220 Quantitative Reasoning & Statistical Methods for Planners I Spring 2009 For information about citing these materials or our Terms of Use, visit: http://ocw.mit.edu/terms.Quantitative Reasoning and Statistical Methods (11.220) Written Assignment #1: Operationalizing Planning Concepts Ezra Haber Glenn, aicp Due: 2/27/09 1 The Problem of Measurement and Perception In class and in the readings we have struggled with fact that the information used by planners, social science researchers, and policy-makers is not drawn from unbiased and naturally-occuring “data sources,” but rather comes into existence through consicious and deliberate acts of measurement. The world may be full of a staggering array of things and phenomena in various shapes, sizes, distributions, and relationships that can all be measured, but there is no single objective way to catalogue and categorize it all without introducing a whole host of assumptions, perspectives, and biases. For the point of view of philosophy, this “problem of perception” presents one of the most sticky challenges of epistemology—a troubling issue that has never been satisfactorally resolved by the empiricists, despite some valiant attempts. For us, being more “realistic” in our approach, we can put aside some of the thornier philosophical concerns, but must still be aware of the choices we make, the tradeoffs we accept, and the biases we introduce when we proceed to measure and describe the physical, social, and economic phenomena of the world around us. 2 The Assignment For this assignment you are being asked to address this problem head-on by turning a vaguely-specified and potentially-complex idea into a clearly-specified definition that can be measured, presented, discussed, and analyzed from a quanititative perspective. In social science research, this process is known as “operalization.” Working first as a group, and then alone, you will need to think about the concept which is to be measured, and confront the tradeoffs between different quantifiable definintions and measurement techniques. 12.1 The Concepts Please choose one of the following to write on: Density: Planners talk about density all the time: new urbanists promote it, zoning regulates it, developers crave it, community activists argue strongly for it or against it. Given all this activity—and despite the inherent quani-tative nature of the idea—it remains a poorly operationalized concept. Imagine that you were hired by a nonprofit research and advocacy group interested in studying on the relationship between density and health at a neighborhood scale. They have a pretty good team working on the prob-lem of measuring health, but have asked you to help operationalize the concept of neighborhood density for them. What would you include, and how would you measure it? Neighborhood health: Health is a good thing, we all agree, but do we always agree on what we mean when we talk about health? Is there such a thing as “neighborhood’ or “community” health, reflecting some amalgamation of the health of the individuals residing there? Imagine that you were hired by a nonprofit research and advocacy group interested in studying on the relationship between density and health at a neighborhood scale. They have a pretty good team working on the problem of measuring density, but have asked you to help operationalize the concept of neighborhood health for them. What would you include, and how would you measure it? Financial need: In order to fairly allocate society’s limited resources, many social programs—including everything from welfare payments to public housing subsidies—attempt to target based on the concept of financial need. As you might expect, different programs measure the concept of “need” differently, based on their internal goals, the populations they serve, their biases about who is truly “needy,” and the administrative protocols and limitations of the agencies involved. Imagine that you have been asked to assist a small non-profit preschool in developing a work-able definition for “financial need” to be used in allocating their limited funds for family scholarships. What would you include, and how would you measure it? Cost of Damage: Later in the course we will talk about the role of planners and quantitative data in regard to questions of risk. One component of risk is probability, which we will cover in the weeks to come; another is cost. For example, in making plans to avoid a natural disaster (or to avoid another natural disaster), we may need to talk about the potential costs of damage if we fail to act. Quantifying the cost of damage from a disaster may at seem straightforward at first glance, but can very quickly become an intractable mess. For this assignment, imagine you have been asked to operationalize the concept of cost due to a natural disaster, to be used by researchers in a global study of the severity of different types of disasters over time. 2Waste: These days, planners talk a lot about being smart, and a key part of be-ing smart is not wasting stuff (money, land, energy, time, etc.). Everyone agrees that waste is a bad thing, but defining it can be quite tricky—is it wasteful to not take advantage of every possible efficincy, or is there some baseline that will keep you from being considered “wasteful”? For this assignment, imagine you have been hired by MIT to measure the Institute’s current level of “energy waste,” in an effort to ultimately mea-sure progress towards eliminating it. How would you operationalize this concept for them? 2.2 Things to think about Once you have selected a concept from the list above, you can work with your classmates to “flesh out” the issues; if done correctly, this collaborative process should actually make your job harder —not easier—as you will be forced to reconcile multiple perspectives and ideas about what is loaded into the particular concept in question. We recommend you approach the assignment as you might approach any other typical planning