Nouns must be converted to adjectives before they can be measured.

Evidence

Ragin Adjective Rule: In general nouns should be converted to adjectives as part of conceptualization and measurement. For example, “years of education” becomes “educated person” or “transparency” (e.g., the Transparency International global index) becomes “transparent government.” — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts and Measurement, 644

Categorization

• DEFINE: Names a concrete rule of conceptualization — recasting an abstract noun as a modifying adjective — that determines what empirical anchors a study must supply.
• XREF: Directly parallels the measurement problems in the library’s social-science methodology readings, where operationalization choices silently fix what counts as a case.