Concepts and Constructs in Research Explained with Examples

There is a general agreement that the line between a ‘concept’ and a construct’ can be a bit blurry. “Leadership behavior” is a concept because people can observe how leaders conduct themselves e.g. communicating more clearly, giving employees time off, providing monetary rewards, and much more. However, “leadership style” is a construct because it is an abstract concept that cannot be directly observed or measured.

So, how do you tell the difference between a concept and a construct?

Concept

A concept is a generally accepted collection of meanings or characteristics that are concrete.

A concept is readily observable and measurable. Examples include weight, pain, dog, revenue, and attendance record.

Some concepts such as a person’s weight are precise and objective, while other concepts such as a person’s personality may be more abstract and difficult to visualize.

Fatigue is an example of a concept because it is a collection of observable behaviors. We can observe bags and dark circles around the eyes of a fatigued person. A student may fall asleep in class when fatigued. Other people may share complaints of no energy and extreme tiredness. It is these observable behaviors that make ‘fatigue’ a concept.

Consider the research topic, “The Moral Implications of Artificial Intelligence and the Effects of AI on Sales Process, Consumer Trust, and Buying Decisions.” Based on this topic, the concepts include:

Consumer behavior
Leadership behavior
Moral implications of AI personalization

Other examples of concepts are age, pain, flexibility, square, circle, unhappiness, larger than, dog, and tree.

Concepts provide a common ground on which to understand and communicate information about objects and events. Classifying and categorizing objects or events with common characteristics beyond any single observation creates concepts.

Consider seeing an athlete approaching. We can identify their movement by saying they are running, walking, skipping, crawling, or hopping. These movements all represent concepts.

If you can observe it or directly measure it, it is most likely a concept.

Types of Concepts

There are various categories of concepts – concrete concepts and abstract concepts.

Note that abstract concepts are also called constructs. A pen, car, or chair are concrete concepts because they symbolize objects we can see, touch, and feel.

Abstract concepts (also called constructs) represent properties or characteristics of objects. Abstract concepts refer to ideas or notions that aren’t tangible but can be understood through thought and discussion. Examples are attitude, intelligence, and efficiency.

Concrete concepts include:

• Revenue
• Population
• Speed
• Gross national product
• Gross domestic product
• Inflation
• Assets
• Liabilities

All these means we can derive concepts from constructs.

Deriving Concepts from Constructs

It is possible to identify various concepts from abstract concepts (constructs).

Productivity is a construct. Some concepts we can derive from this construct include:

• Number of units produced
• Sales revenue
• Error rate
• Resource utilization
• Output per hour
• Annual output

Motivation is an abstract concept (construct). As an idea or notion, we can understand motivation in terms of concrete concepts of:

• Attendance records
• Engagement scores
• Completion rate
• Goal achievement

Note that ‘employee engagement’ is not directly observable. Thus, ‘engagement scores’ is a concept but ‘engagement’ and ‘employee engagement’ are constructs.

Construct

It’s important to emphasize that a construct is a concept but with something added to it. That is why constructs are also called abstract concepts.

A construct is not readily observable and can only be measured using multiple variables. Examples include patient satisfaction, brand awareness, leadership style, and ethics.

For example, “intelligence” is a concept (abstract concept, to be specific). It is an abstraction from the observation of presumably intelligent and nonintelligent behaviors. But as a scientific construct, “intelligence” means both more and less than it may mean as a concept.

Patient satisfaction is considered a construct. Hospital administrators cannot readily observe patient satisfaction. However, we understand that patient satisfaction is the extent to which patients are happy and content with their healthcare. Instead, concepts (concrete concepts) related to patient satisfaction would be:

Wait time
Treatment effectiveness
Communication clarity
Staff responsiveness
Facility cleanliness

Constructs are not directly measurable or observable. Thus, constructs have to be inferred from other indicators that are directly observed.

A construct can only be measured using multiple variables.

For instance, the construct of “intelligence” can be inferred by combining language proficiency levels, IQ, or elements that accurately reflect the phenomenon being investigated. Technically, this is called construct validity in the context of research. 

Scholars often refer to these abstract concepts as constructs because they have been conceptually constructed to represent a name of something real that cannot be directly observed but may be useful to study or describe.

Using our sample research paper title stated earlier, ethics, leadership style, ethical leadership, consumer decision-making, and consumer trust are all considered constructs.

Since constructs are not directly observable, in order to measure them we often use measures that are deemed to be manifestations of the construct. Measures should be chosen that are reasonable empirical indicators of a construct. For example, resting heart rate is an empirical measure of cardiovascular health.

List of some common constructs investigated in research

Constructs	Operational description
Brand awareness	Percentage of respondents having heard of a designated brand; awareness could be either unaided or aided.
Demographic characteristics	The age, gender, occupation status, income level, and so forth of individuals providing the information.
Satisfaction of experience	How people evaluate their post-purchase consumption experience of a specified object.
Organizational culture	The collective values, beliefs, and behaviors that characterize the interactions among employees within an organization
Sustainability	The ability of an organization to maintain its operations at a certain level indefinitely
Attitudes toward a brand	The degree of positive or negative evaluation that consumers hold regarding a specific brand.

More examples of abstract concepts (constructs) are: