A Very Brief Philosophy of Measurement

The first question in the realm of measure­ment is obviously “What is to be measured?” However, most answers to this question make a serious and fundamental error, assuming that the characteristics of that which is to be measured determine how it should be mea­sured.

Thus, the decisions that we make about how a concept, such as a conflict or conflict behavior, is to be defined and operationalized affect the relationships into which this concept enters. In other words, our definition of the concept reflects what we already know about the concept as well as what we learn; the idea of a definition that is fixed and independent of ongoing research is not theoretically or meth­odologically sound. Therefore, we reluctantly provide the following definitions:

Conflict [italics added] has three characteris­tics: incompatibility of goals, incompatibil­ity of actions, and perceived interdependence between the parties (Putnam, 2006; Rahim, 2010). Incompatibility of goals relates to the conflict of interests that causes disagreement between the parties (e.g., De Dreu, Harinck, & Van Vianen, 1999; Rubin, Pruitt, & Kim, 1994). Incompatibility of actions refers to the behaviors that are used to man­age the disagreement (e.g., Deutsch, 1973; Roloff & Wright, 2009; Tjosvold, 2006). Interdependence refers to the relational ties that cause incompatible goals and actions to become issues that need to be managed or resolved. Furthermore, interdependence shapes how these issues will be handled (Deutsch, 1973; Putnam, 2006; Rahim, 2010). (Wang, Fink, & Cai, 2012, p. 223)

Communication has been defined as peo­ple’s “ability to store, transmit, retrieve, ana­lyze, and interpret information” (Fink, 1998, p. 3) as well as behaviors that incorporate this ability. With these preliminaries taken care of, we now discuss the key measurement issues.