Thus, "fear" might be operationally defined as specified changes in heart rate, electrodermal activity, pupil dilation, and blood pressure.
Scientists should describe the operations (procedures, actions, or processes) that define the concept with enough specificity such that other investigators can replicate their research.
[4][5] Operational definitions are also used to define system states in terms of a specific, publicly accessible process of preparation or validation testing.
[7] Despite the controversial philosophical origins of the concept, particularly its close association with logical positivism, operational definitions have undisputed practical applications.
This is especially so in the social and medical sciences, where operational definitions of key terms are used to preserve the unambiguous empirical testability of hypothesis and theory.
Inspired by Ernst Mach, in 1914 Bridgman attempted to redefine unobservable entities concretely in terms of the physical and mental operations used to measure them.
As Boyd notes, "In actual, and apparently reliable, scientific practice, changes in the instrumentation associated with theoretical terms are routine.
According to a 'pure' operationalist conception, these sorts of modifications would not be methodologically acceptable, since each definition must be considered to identify a unique 'object' (or class of objects).
The subsequent enquiry found that the failure arose because engineers had specified the supply of a quantity of flat steel plate.
The word flat in this context lacked an operational definition, so there was no test for accepting or rejecting a particular shipment or for controlling quality.
In his managerial and statistical writings, W. Edwards Deming placed great importance on the value of using operational definitions in all agreements in business.
Operational, in a process context, also can denote a working method or a philosophy that focuses principally on cause and effect relationships (or stimulus/response, behavior, etc.)
For instance, a knowledge-based engineering system can enhance its operational aspect and thereby its stability through more involvement by the subject-matter expert, thereby opening up issues of limits that are related to being human.
As in, many times, computational results have to be taken at face value due to several factors (hence the duck test's necessity arises) that even an expert cannot overcome.
Many domains, with a numerical focus, use limit theory, of various sorts, to overcome the duck test necessity with varying degrees of success.
In arguing for an object-based methodology, Peter Wegner[15] suggested that "positivist scientific philosophies, such as operationalism in physics and behaviorism in psychology" were powerfully applied in the early part of the 20th century.
The thermodynamic definition of temperature, due to Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, refers to heat "flowing" between "infinite reservoirs".