Operationalism asks us to demonstrate that we are conducting observations of extant entities not projecting imagination and subjectivity.

As a general rule:

*** We shall define all phenomenon which we choose to observe, in terms of the sequence of physical operations (actions) used, the instruments used, and the measurements taken with those instruments (whether cardinal or ordinal), rather than either the use of analogies of any form, interpretations of those observations, or subjective experiences of those observations, so that we guarantee to any audience that all entities that we refer to exist, and that no information is added to the observation but that which can be observed when reproduced by the repetition of those actions, instruments and measurements by others.***