The Variables

The variables in the table can be operationalized in various ways as shown above. First, to operationalize the age, the researcher could ask the respondents to provide their current age in years. Second, there are two main categories for gender, namely male or female. This variable is usually measured by asking the respondents to indicate whether they are male or female. Third, ethnicity can be operationalized by asking the subjects to specify their ethnic groups; for example, Hispanics, Americans, African-Americans and others. Fourth, the investigator could operationalize the education variable by requiring subjects to indicate their highest level of education e.g. primary, high school, college, etc. For income, the variable can be made more specific by asking respondents to specify their range of annual incomes in US dollars.

Marital status is a categorical variable. To operationalize the variable, respondents could be asked to specify their marital status which can be single, married or divorced. Other variables such as weight and blood pressure can be operationalized by requiring subjects to specify their current weight in kilograms and blood pressure readings, respectively. To specify hypertension, the researcher may ask subjects to state whether they are diseased or not diseased with hypertension. Similarly, body temperature can be specified by asking respondents to state their immediate body temperature readings.

For health insurance status, the best way to operationalize the variable would be to ask subjects whether they have a health insurance cover or not, while for smoking status, respondents can be categorized as either smokers or non-smokers. Lastly, to operationalize the cancer stage variable, subjects could be asked to indicate the present stage of their cancer condition. These stages include stages I to IV and are determined based on the extent to which the cancer has spread.