 Dear students, in this module, we're going to talk about two important aspects of theory building process. Previously, we saw that how deductive and inductive approaches are useful in the theory building process. However, these deductive or inductive approaches are dependent on concepts and variables. So let's see that what do we mean by concepts and variables? Concepts are the abstract ideas or mental constructs that represent some aspect of social word. When we talk about concepts, then concepts are ideas that are produced in our mind. Different images that we have in our mind are thoughts and imaginations. However, when we see them in our empirical real world, then we can convert those concepts into different variables. What are the variables? These are not abstract entities. They are rather observable and measurable indicators of concepts. In this way, we see that operationalization is also a process through which we can make different concepts, abstract ideas, measurable. So defining how the concepts are measured in the research. We try to understand it through an example, like we take happiness. So what is happiness or happiness? This is an abstract concept, an abstract idea. If we try to convert it into different variables, then we can say that someone can be happy in the game, someone can be happy to watch a movie, someone can be happy to eat food. So happiness can be converted into different variables. We can reflect happiness through its different indicators, which were already in our mind as an abstract idea. When we talk about variables, then variables are generally two types. Dependent variable and independent variable. Independent variables are that are manipulated or controlled in the research to test their effect on other variables. For example, what is the connection between happiness and our educational attainment? Do those who are more happy, their grades are higher than those who are not happy? So happiness is an independent variable, we use it in this hypothesis and we can see its effect on educational attainment. Similarly, dependent variables are made to see how they are affected by the independent variable. Like we took an example of the effect of happiness on educational attainment. So educational attainment will be a dependent variable on which happiness is being seen. So both concepts and variables are essential for developing the theory and or to test the theories. For example, for sociology, these concepts of, for example, the concept of social capital can be operationalized by measuring the number of social connections and social networks. Social capital is a very famous sociologist Pierre Bohdiot. His concept is that we can operationalize it in such a way that we can see that the connections between different people are based on which connections are made. In that we can see the social networks, like we see in social media that your friends are in Facebook, their friends are in Facebook, then their friends are in Facebook, then their friends are in Facebook. So this builds a network of connections. Similarly, in social capital, in real world, we can identify any networks of connections through which we can make the concept of social capital miserable. Similarly, if we take an example of an independent variable, then the family structure is manipulated to test its effect on educational attainment. For example, we took happiness as an independent variable in the last year and we saw its effect on educational attainment. So we test these independent and independent variables under high processes and if we get the same result by testing it again and again, then we go towards the theory-building process.