Variable and attribute (research)
Encyclopedia
In science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

 and research
Research
Research can be defined as the scientific search for knowledge, or as any systematic investigation, to establish novel facts, solve new or existing problems, prove new ideas, or develop new theories, usually using a scientific method...

, attribute is a characteristic of an object (person, thing, etc.). Attributes are closely related to variables. Variable is a logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...

al set of attributes. Variables can "vary" - for example, be high or low. How high, or how low, is determined by the value of the attribute (and in fact, an attribute could be just the word "low" or "high").

Examples:
  • the variable age
    Age
    Age may refer to:* Age , an aspect of mathematical model theory* Age , an international peer-reviewed journal operated by Springer.* The Age, a daily newspaper published in Melbourne, Australia* Agé, a god* Åge, a given name...

     is made of numerical attributes such as 1, 2, 3.... 99

Note that attributes make take different form - words, numbers. Thus they can belong to different levels of measurement
Level of measurement
The "levels of measurement", or scales of measure are expressions that typically refer to the theory of scale types developed by the psychologist Stanley Smith Stevens. Stevens proposed his theory in a 1946 Science article titled "On the theory of scales of measurement"...

.
While attributes are often intuitive, in some cases the scientists may decide to artificially limit the amount of attributes a variable has. This process is usually part of the operationalization
Operationalization
In humanities, operationalization is the process of defining a fuzzy concept so as to make the concept clearly distinguishable or measurable and to understand it in terms of empirical observations...

 process. In the example of social class variable cited above the listed attributes (lower, middle and upper class) are not the only ones that could be used; each class could be differentiated between upper and lower, transforming thus changing the three attributes into six (see the model proposed by William Lloyd Warner) or it could use different terminology (such as the working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...

 as in the model by Gilbert and Kahl). In another
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