Objects (in Research)

Objects (in Research)

Objects (in Research)

In research, objects—also called cases or research units—are the entities that a study focuses on. They are the “things” about which data are collected and analyzed. Depending on the discipline and research question, objects may be individuals, groups, organizations, or other units of interest. For example, a psychologist might study people, an economist might study firms, and a sociologist might study families or households. In quantitative research, objects are often represented as rows in a data frame, with each row corresponding to one object and each column representing a measured variable.


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