Measurement choices usually drive concept definition in social science, not the reverse.

Evidence

While we all pay lip service to the mantra that theory should guide methodology, it is often the case that the cart is leading the horse. Symptomatic of this is the Jaggers and Gurr discussion of the polity concept of democracy (1995). Their analysis of the concept of democracy is in fact located in the section entitled“Operationalizing Democracy”: clearly the focus is on the quantitative measure, not on the concept. In contrast, I shall spend a lot of time on the various conceptualizations of democracy, and only afterward will I analyze the downstream consequences for quantitative measures. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts, 63

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: ‘The Cart Before the Horse’ — a survey of how datasets like Polity retroactively define the concepts they claim to measure. Useful cross-domain parallel to the diamond-grading post about standards shaping markets.