Operational precision in empirical research sacrifices what is socially relevant.

Evidence

Empirical social research is faced with a kind of paradox. The more exact its methods are, the more those methods run the risk of substituting an object defined in `operational terms’ for the object really being investigated. In other words, the problem itself is restricted to what can be discovered by the questionnaire procedure, and what is relevant to society is neglected . — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 497

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The measurement paradox gets at why method itself distorts the object.
• SEED: Article angle: ‘What the questionnaire cannot see’ — how operationalism shrinks the empirical object until the social vanishes.