Question

Describe how you will operationalize the main variables in the hypothesis.

My (first draft and not complete, however, here to give you the gist.) hypothesis is "In females, deficits in affective empathy are not associated with psychopathic traits but are associated with antisocial personality disorder.

Answer 1

There are three main variables in the hypothesis. They can be operationalized in several ways, but the most common method would be to measure through questionnaires:

1. Affective empathy can be operationalized as the score obtained on the subscale of the Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy (Reniers, Corcoran, Drake, Shryane & Völlm, 2011).

2. Psychopathic traits can be operationalized as the score obtained on the Psychopathic Personality Traits Scale (Boduszek, Debowska & Willmott, 2016).

3. Antisocial personality disorder can be operationalized as the score obtained on the Antisocial Personality Questionnaire (Blackburn & Fawcett, 1999).