Concepts that resist adjectival form hide which end of the scale causally matters.

Evidence

If the noun or concept does not lend itself to becoming an adjective, that suggests a potentially problematic situation. A good example in the context of this book is consumption as a part of the concept of poverty. Consumption does not lend itself to being an adjective; one is forced to modify it by requiring poverty to be low levels of consumption. The second scenario is when the incomplete concept does not suggest which end of the spectrum or continuum is of research and causal interest. Here the factor “years of education” does not tell us whether we are interested in educated as the key causal variable. Hence we need to convert years of education into the concept of educated, as illustrated in figure 4.1. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts and Measurement, 646

Categorization

• QUESTION: Is there a principled test for when a concept is genuinely resists adjectivization versus when the researcher simply hasn’t pushed hard enough? Worth chasing against other operationalization frameworks.