IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/somere/v3y1975i4p355-383.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Confounding of Measured and Unmeasured Variables

Author

Listed:
  • H.M. Blalock

    (University of Washington)

Abstract

Given the impossibility of measuring and including more than a few of the variables that ideally belong in a theoretical model, we know that biases are introduced when omitted variables are confounded with measured variables. In particular, professional or ideological biases may affect the labels attached to interrelated sets of variables. In sociology we tend to confound "status effects" with many possible nonstatus effects of objective characteristics such as education, occupation, or income. It is shown that, without the introduction of simplifying assumptions, such status and nonstatus effects cannot be disentangled. The case of "status" and "power" effects is also discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • H.M. Blalock, 1975. "The Confounding of Measured and Unmeasured Variables," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 3(4), pages 355-383, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:somere:v:3:y:1975:i:4:p:355-383
    DOI: 10.1177/004912417500300401
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/004912417500300401
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/004912417500300401?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nick Lee & John W. Cadogan & Laura Chamberlain, 2013. "The MIMIC model and formative variables: problems and solutions," AMS Review, Springer;Academy of Marketing Science, vol. 3(1), pages 3-17, March.
    2. John W. Cadogan & Nick Lee & Laura Chamberlain, 2013. "Formative variables are unreal variables: why the formative MIMIC model is invalid," AMS Review, Springer;Academy of Marketing Science, vol. 3(1), pages 38-49, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:somere:v:3:y:1975:i:4:p:355-383. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.