Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Reflections on social measurement: how social scientists generate, modify, and validate indicators and scales / Eric Tucker ; Madhu Viswanathan ; Geoffrey Walford -- Section one: Methods for data collection -- Surveys, tests, and observational scales -- How to get valid answers from survey questions: what we learned from asking about sexual behavior and the measurement of sexuality / Aniruddha Das ; Edward O. Laumann -- The SAT®: design principles and innovations of a quintessential American social indicator / Howard T. Everson -- Measurement as cooperative communication: what research participants learn from questionnaires / Norbert Schwarz -- Developing observation instruments and arriving at inter-rater reliability for a range of contexts and raters: the early childhood environment rating scales / Elena Soucacou ; Kathy Sylva -- Studying teacher effectiveness: the challenges of developing valid measures / Linda Darling-Hammond ; Jack Diechmann ; Ed Haertel ; Rachel Lotan ; Xiaoxia Newton ; Sandy Philipose ; Eliza Spang ; Ewart Thomas ; Peter Williamson -- Identifying consumers' compulsive buying tendencies: lessons learned for measuring consumer-related phenomena / Kent B. Monroe ; Nancy M. Ridgway ; Monika Kukar-Kinney -- Section two: The context of measurement -- Comparative, cultural, linguistic, and international dimensions -- Linguistic factors in the assessment of English language learners / Jamal Abedi -- Measurement issues in cross-cultural research / A. Timothy Church -- Conceptualizing and measuring culture: problems and solutions / Louis Tay ; Sang Eun Woo ; Jennifer Klafehn ; Chi-yue Chiu -- International comparisons of educational attainment: purposes, processes, and problems / David Phillips -- Measurement across time and space -- Reflections on measuring behavior: time and the grid / Roger Bakeman -- Approaches to measuring multi-dimension constructs across the life course: operationalizing depression over the lifespan / Brian Mezuk ; William W. Eaton -- Description and discovery in socio-spatial analysis: the case of space syntax / Bill Hillier ; Noah Raford -- Section three: Fundamental issues in measurement -- Minimizing measurement error -- Understanding the intangibles of measurement in the social sciences / Madhu Viswanathan -- Towards a more rigorous scientific approach to social measurement: considering a grounded indicator approach to developing measurement tools / Eric Tucker -- Theorisation of constructs -- Measuring conceptualisations of morality: or how to invent a construct and measure it too / Remo Ostini -- The problem with poverty: definition, measurement and interpretation / Robert Walker ; Mark Tomlinson ; Glenn Williams -- Critical and ethical perspectives -- Ethical issues in social measurement / Martin Bulmer ; Josephine Ocloo -- Measuring is more than assigning numbers / Stephen Gorard -- Is social measurement possible, and is it necessary? / Martyn Hammersley -- Section four: The real world practice of measurement -- Sensitive issues and the difficult to measure -- Sensitive issues and the difficulty to measure: the case of measuring child sexual abuse / Will Tucker ; Ross Cheit -- Indirect measurement / David J. Bartholomew -- Improving the practice of measurement -- Increasing the measurement accuracy of consumption intentions / Brian Wansink -- Making applied measurement effective and efficient / Ujwal Kayandé -- Contemporary challenges of longitudinal measurement using HRS data / John J. McArdle -- Measuring the dimensions of social capital in developing countries / Veronica Nyhan Jones ; Michael Woolcock -- Administrative and secondary data and performance measurement -- The use of administrative data to answer policy questions: secondary data on crime and the problem with homicide / Marc Riedel -- Assessing performance of school systems: the measurement and assessment challenges of NCLB / Sean Mulvenon.