Question

How could the construct, exhaustion, be measured using (a) an operational definition based on self-report (e.g., a questionnaire), and (b) an operational definition based on behavior (e.g., what kinds of behavior would you expect to see from an exhausted individual?)

Answer 1

Background: Operational psychology is a branch of psychology that measures the feelings, emotions, and thoughts and behavioral aspects of human behavior. There are several parameters to determine human perception, thoughts and so on.

Operational constructs: The psychiatrists use the psychological constructs to determine the behavior and emotions of a person.

There are two types of operational measurement:

Questionnaire measurement: This event is a psychological scale called Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale which tests a person’s feelings, emotions, and cognitive thought processes.

Behavioral measurement: This method measures the behavioral aspects of a person. The behavioral system measures the aggression shown by the respondents.

Example: In a hotel bar, the behavioral system measures the aggressive behavior of the people in the bar.

Exhaustion: It is the most common type of fatigue shown by humans when they feel overtired. The human brain release's, stress hormones and reduce the release of dopamine and serotonin. Thus, people suffer from sleep deprivation because of this reason. Psychologists estimate fatigue in humans using questionnaires, surveys, Likert scale and behavioral systems.

The research design measure's, fatigue within the questionnaire and behavioral aspects is experimental research. We use an experimental research design to measure the fatigue behavior of the respondents. We conduct laboratory experiments to estimate the exhaustion behavior of the respondents.

A Likert scale of 1 to 7 measures the values of the responses gathered from the respondents. The research method for measuring fatigue in behavioral aspects is quantitative.

Research states that psychological construct's estimate behavior and emotions using the following methods.

1. Social Readjustment, Rating Scale: This scale measures the points to the mentally tough situations that people experienced in the past. It is based on a self-report questionnaire.

2. Perceived Stress Scale: It measures the stress that a person feels and experiences in his life.

Measurement of exhaustion from the questionnaire and behavior

1. Fatigue severity scale: This scale measures the fatigue behavior of a person from a Likert scale between 1 to 7. The value of 1 correspondents, to strongly agree and vice versa. There is a set of 9 questions. For example, in the question “Are you feeling exhausted?" if the respondent marks 1 as his response, he has a low fatigue value.

We can infer that the person is not feeling stressed and exhausted. This scale helps the doctors analyze the stress levels of their patients. They can provide medication to counter the fatigue behavior.

2. Fatigue monitoring system

It helps to assess the fatigue behavior of the drivers while driving the car. It analyses the eye’s retina and measures the level of fatigue caused and provides a timely alert to the driver.

Conclusion: we have discussed the psychological constructs of exhaustion. We have studied the measurement of fatigue with questionnaires and behavior.