In this chapter we will argue, firstly, that Bacon’s engages in a pecu-liar form of mathematization of nature that develops a quali-quantitative methodology of measurement. Secondly, we will show that medicine is one of the disciplines where that dual way of measurement is practiced. In the first section of the chapter, we will expose the ontology involved in the Baconian proposal of measurement of nature. The second section will address the place that mixed mathematics occupies in Bacon’s scheme of (...) scientific branches and will suggest that a proper advancement of medicine can generate a new branch of mixed mathematics. The next section will reconstruct Bacon’s approach to measurement and expose its quali-quantitative import. In the last section, we will show some examples of medicine in which this quali-quantitative measurement is applied. (shrink)

By confronting variable use, the variationist method can reveal patterns of subjectification of grammatical morphemes. Applying this method to the analysis of salir(se) ‘go out’ variation in Mexican Spanish oral data, we conclude that subjectification is manifested structurally in the tendency for middle-marked salirse to co-occur with first-person singular or referents close to the speaker, positive polarity and the past tense. Further comparative dialectal and diachronic data indicate the origins of the se -marked form in physical spatial deviation. Usage of (...) the form then extends to situations that denote deviation from social norms. We thus propose that the locus of subjectification of this counter-expectation marker is an increasingly speaker-based construal of expectation. This semantic change appears to proceed via absorption of contextual meaning in the frequently occurring + de ‘from’ construction. (shrink)

In psychotherapy research, treatment efficacy is commonly studied by means of self-report questionnaires to gain quantitative data on symptom development. The data serve as input for statistical analyses up to the level of evidence-based treatment. We analyzed how a patient in a psychotherapy study experienced the translation of her story into quantitative data by combining a phenomenological qualitative analysis of her therapeutic narrative and a visual analysis of her extensively annotated paper-andpencil questionnaires. Our findings provide a practical empirical (...) illustration of the nature and impact of known validity issues. Beyond, we found the act of questionnaire administration affected the primary complaint such that it became performative toward the symptoms under study. We discuss the epistemic consequences for the validity of data, and we argue that valid data collection requires qualitative scrutiny of meaning within data and a concept of validity that allows for consideration of performativity of data collection. (shrink)

The question of quantitative methods versus qualitative methods appears periodically in most of the scientific fields. Which is the most relevant? The most useful? Do we find the same things when using these two options, are they congruent? While most of the academic fields have a quite important and strong literature dealing with these questions nowadays, it is not really the case for zoosemiotics. In this paper, I will introduce the main issues zoosemioticians can resolve by using quantitative (...) methods and tools, and how and why it is mandatory to implement them if qualitative theory to pursue our researches further. (shrink)

The cognitive reserve is widely accepted as the active ability to cope with brain damage, using preexisting cognitive and compensatory processes. The common CR proxies used are the number of formal years of education, intelligence quotient or premorbid functioning, occupation attainment, and participation in leisure activities. More recently, it has employed the level of literacy and engagement in high-level cognitive demand of professional activities. This study aims to identify and summarize published methodologies to assess the CR quantitatively. We searched for (...) published studies on PubMed, ScienceDirect, and Web of Science between September 2018 and September 2021. We only included those studies that characterized the CR assessment methodology. The search strategy identified 1,285 publications, of which 25 were included. Most of the instruments targeted proxies individually. The lack of a gold standard tool that incorporates all proxies and cognitive tests highlights the need to develop a more holistic battery for the quantitative assessment of CR. Further studies should focus on a quantitative methodology that includes all these proxies supported by normative data to improve the use of CR as a valid measure in clinical contexts. (shrink)

Although current literature demonstrates how parents benefit from parent empowerment programs, the development of a quantitative measure of parent empowerment has garnered limited attention in parenting research. The goal of this research was therefore to develop and validate a quantitative measure for the assessment of practitioners’ attitudes and competence in parent empowerment. In the process of item generation, the qualitative findings derived from four studies in relation to the perceived outcomes and experiences in parent empowerment were synthesized in (...) the first stage. In the second stage, a list of narratives that articulated different themes of parent empowerment was generated, which resulted in an item pool containing 28 items. In the third stage, the research team converted the 28 items into a survey instrument. In the fourth stage, a first-scale validation study was conducted to explore the factor structure of the initial 28-item questionnaire. The exploratory factor analysis on the first sample of 366 practitioners yielded a twofold factor structure with 17 items, including practitioners’ attitudes in parent empowerment and practitioners’ competence in parent empowerment. In the final stage, a second-scale validation study was undertaken to verify the fit of the twofold factor structure. A confirmatory factor analysis on the second sample of 170 practitioners demonstrated a good model fit. The results of reliability tests for the whole scale and two subscales also indicate satisfactory internal consistency. The Parent EmpowermentviaTransformative Learning Questionnaire (PETLQ) was thus developed and confirmed as a scale with sufficient factorial validity and internal consistency to be used for assessing parenting practitioners’ attitudes and competence in parent empowerment and for evaluating the effectiveness of parent empowerment programs. (shrink)

The first goal of this paper is to develop a theoretical and practical framework which can help to measure the emotional value generated by organizations in quantitative terms. Its second goal is to use data obtained from the UCAN in Spain as a case study to illustrate the quantification of the emotional value generated, with a view to factoring that value into a social accounting system. Ever greater recognition of the social role of organizations in recent years has led (...) to a need for a consistent definition of the concept of socio-emotional value, and for instruments that can be used to measure that value in terms of generic social accounting. Taking the current lack of standardization in such models and instruments, especially those that deal with emotional value as its starting point, the paper proposes a new instrument for measuring that value quantitatively in such a way as to overcome some of the limitations of earlier proposals. The underlying perspective is that the monetary values identified in market and non-market transactions do not accurately account for all the value generated for different stakeholders, and that adjustments are required through a correction factor applied to the value variables identified. The quantification of the socio-emotional value generated by an organization is seen as a more comprehensive indicator of its performance, given that it provides more information and takes into account the value generated for stakeholders as a whole in all dimensions. (shrink)

While cultural sociology has recently made a comeback in research on social inequality both in the context of poverty studies and studies of immigrant integration, it has rarely investigated how particular constructions of the problem of socioeconomic mobility are themselves culturally situated. The article addresses this neglect by investigating the problematization of disadvantaged lives within the relational framework of Bourdieu’s cultural theory of the state. Here, the state exercises symbolic violence by transforming one arbitrary cultural standpoint in social space into (...) a universal standard, or a taken-for-granted “doxa,” against which other cultural positions can only come off as deficient. The article extends this perspective by addressing the role of official statistics in this process. Taking Germany’s official monitoring of the socioeconomic integration of immigrants as its case and drawing from document analysis, interviews, ethnographic observation, and data from the German General Social Survey, the article shows how such statistical instruments of the welfare state in fact tacitly universalize a model of the good life particular to civil servants, the very constructors of the monitors, as a benchmark for immigrant integration. (shrink)

Scientific realism has been advanced as an interpretation of the natural sciences but never the behavioral sciences. This book introduces a novel version of scientific realism, Measured Realism, that characterizes the kind of theoretical progress in the social and psychological sciences that is uneven but indisputable. It proposes a theory of measurement, Population-Guided Estimation, that connects natural, psychological, and social scientific inquiry. Presenting quantitative methods in the behavioral sciences as at once successful and regulated by the world, the book (...) will engage philosophers of science, historians of science, sociologists of science, and scientists interested in the foundations of their own disciplines. Part I introduces measured realism beginning with a novel realist theory of measurement (Population-Guided Estimation, or PGE). It examines two other versions of scientific realism — minimal (Hacking) and robust (Boyd, Putnam, and Newton-Smith) — and advances measured realism as best supported by the evidence in the behavioral sciences. It also critically evaluates the anti-realist arguments of van Fraassen, Laudan, and Fine. Part II formulates and develops a version of epistemological naturalism most appropriate to measured realism. Drawing upon the realist theory of measurement developed earlier, it favorably appraises a variety of statistical methods in the behavioral sciences against selected criticisms. It concludes that traditional, narrative methods in the behavioral and social sciences are unreliable by the measures of epistemological naturalism. (shrink)

A data provenance framework is subject to security threats and risks, which increase the uncertainty, or lack of trust, in provenance information. Information assurance is challenged by incomplete information; one cannot exhaustively characterize all threats or all vulnerabilities. One technique that specifically incorporates a probabilistic notion of uncertainty is subjective logic. Subjective logic allows belief and uncertainty, due to incomplete information, to be specified and operated upon in a coherent manner. A mapping from the standard definition of information assurance to (...) a more quantitative subjective logic framework is suggested with a focus on the specific application of data provenance. Finally, specific consideration is given to the notion of uncertainty within subjective logic and its relation to information entropy. Information entropy is an alternative measure of uncertainty and a fundamental relationship is hypothesized between uncertainty in subjective logic and entropy. (shrink)

Scientific realism is usually a thesis or theses advanced about our best natural science. In contrast, this book defends scientific realism applied to the social and behavioral sciences. It does so, however, by applying the same argument strategy that many have found convincing for the natural sciences, namely, by arguing that we can only explain the success of the sciences by postulating their approximate truth. The particular success that Trout emphasizes for the social sciences is the effective use of statistical (...) testing. Social scientists apply diverse statistical measurement tools to social reality; they are able to refine and improve those measurements over time. The best explanation for such success is that the social sciences give us an approximately true account of some of the laws and entities of the social world. (shrink)

Scientific realism is usually a thesis or theses advanced about our best natural science. In contrast, this book defends scientific realism applied to the social and behavioral sciences. It does so, however, by applying the same argument strategy that many have found convincing for the natural sciences, namely, by arguing that we can only explain the success of the sciences by postulating their approximate truth. The particular success that Trout emphasizes for the social sciences is the effective use of statistical (...) testing. Social scientists apply diverse statistical measurement tools to social reality; they are able to refine and improve those measurements over time. The best explanation for such success is that the social sciences give us an approximately true account of some of the laws and entities of the social world. (shrink)

The thesis that numbers are ratios of quantities has recently been advanced by a number of philosophers. While adequate as a definition of the natural numbers, it is not clear that this view suffices for our understanding of the reals. These require continuous quantity and relative to any such quantity an infinite number of additive relations exist. Hence, for any two magnitudes of a continuous quantity there exists no unique ratio. This problem is overcome by defining ratios, and hence real (...) numbers, as binary relations between infinite standard sequences. This definition leads smoothly into a new definition of measurement consonant with the traditional view of measurement as the discovery or estimation of numerical relations. The traditional view is further strengthened by allowing that the additive relations internal to a quantity are distinct from relations observed in the behaviour of objects manifesting quantities. In this way the traditional theory can accommodate the theory of conjoint measurement. This is worth doing because the traditional theory has one great strength lacked by its rivals: measurement statements and quantitative laws are able to be understood literally. 1 This paper was completed in 1990-1. while the author was a visiting scholar at the Irvine Research Unit in Mathematical Behavioral Sciences. University of California. Irvine. The author wishes to thank the Director. Professor R. D. Luce, for the generous provision of space and facilities within the Unit and for his critical comments upon some of the ideas expressed herein: Professor L. Narens. for his trenchant criticisms: and the University of Sydney, for granting Special Study Leave and financial assistance to make the visit possible. (shrink)

The validity of psychological measurement is crucially connected to a peculiar form of epistemic circularity. This circularity can be a threat when there are no independent ways to assess whether a certain procedure is actually measuring the intended target of measurement. This paper focuses on how Gustav Theodor Fechner addressed the measurement circularity that emerged in his psychophysical research. First, I show that Fechner's approach to the problem of circular measurement involved a core idealizing assumption of a shared human (...) physiology. Second, I assess Fechner's approach to this issue against the backdrop of his own epistemology of measurement and the measurement context of his time. Third, I claim that, from a coherentist and historicallysituated perspective, Fechner's quantification can be regarded as a first successful step of a longer-term quantification process. To conclude, I draw from these insights some general epistemological reflections that are relevant to current quantitative psychology. (shrink)

BackgroundThe merits and drawbacks of moral relevance models of addiction have predominantly been discussed theoretically, without empirical evidence of these potential effects. This study develops and evaluates a novel survey measure for assessing moral evaluations of patient substance misuse (ME-PSM).MethodsThis measure was tested on 524 health professionals (i.e., physicians, nurses, and other health professionals) in California (n = 173), urban France (n = 102), and urban China (n = 249). Demographic factors associated with ME-PSM were investigated using analyses of variance (...) (ANOVAs) and t-tests, with results suggesting that ME-PSM is higher among younger health professionals, nurses (when compared with physicians and other health professionals), and Chinese health professionals (when compared with French and American health professionals).ResultsResults provide preliminary support for the psychometric quality of the survey measure introduced in this study, including the existence of a single latent structure and partial invariance of collected data across countries.ConclusionThe survey measure for ME-PSM which was developed and tested in the current study appears to hold potential utility for use as a measure of moral views of patient substance misuse. With development, this measure may be used to examine moral evaluations, both as factors of stigma and of other clinical factors associated with the treatment of patients with substance use disorders. (shrink)

The project “Artificial and Artistic Vision. Computer Vision and Art History in Practical-Methodical Cooperation” is interdisciplinary by definition and also in its personnel composition and combines the humanities, engineering, and natural sciences. Together, prototypes and methodological approaches to an automatic vision that assists art history are being developed in the form of basic research.

Bioscientists generate far more data than their minds can handle, and this trend is likely to continue. With the aid of a small set of versatile tools for mathematical modeling and statistical assessment, bioscientists can explore their real-world systems without experiencing data overflow. This article outlines an approach for combining modern high-throughput, low-cost, but non-selective biospectroscopy measurements with soft, multivariate biochemometrics data modeling to overview complex systems, test hypotheses, and making new discoveries. From preliminary, broad hypotheses and goals, many relevant (...) samples are selected and measured with respect to many informative variables. The resulting tables represent a “cacophony” of data. From these, the most relevant and reliable “underlying harmonies and rhythms” are extracted and tested statistically, displayed for interpretation, and used for prediction. Outliers are detected automatically. Interesting subsets of samples can then be chosen for in-depth analyses in subsequent research cycles. This pragmatic, top-down approach takes advantage of developments in both “soft,” data-driven modeling and “hard,” knowledge-driven cultures. Data analytical examples show how information-rich biospectroscopy can be used for characterizing and quantifying known and unknown chemical constituents and physical phenomena in intact biosamples. This is based on a combination of deductive “hard” and inductive “soft” modeling. The examples represent NIR spectra of biochemical mixtures, FTIR spectra of a microbiological fermentation process, and FTIR analysis of fatty acids in milk for functional genomics. (shrink)

The need for quantitative measurement represents a unifying bond that links all the physical, biological, and social sciences. Measurements of such disparate phenomena as subatomic masses, uncertainty, information, and human values share common features whose explication is central to the achievement of foundational work in any particular mathematical science as well as for the development of a coherent philosophy of science. This book presents a theory of measurement, one that is "abstract" in that it is concerned with highly general (...) axiomatizations of empirical and qualitative settings and how these can be represented quantitatively. It was inspired by, and represents a generalization and extension of, the last major research work in this field, Foundations of Measurement Vol. I, by Krantz, Luce, Suppes, and Tversky published in 1971. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that the probability axioms constitute norms of rationality governing degrees of belief. This view, known as subjective Bayesianism, has been widely criticized for being too idealized. It is claimed that the norms on degrees of belief postulated by subjective Bayesianism cannot be followed by human agents, and hence have no normative force for beings like us. This problem is especially pressing since the standard framework of subjective Bayesianism only allows us to distinguish between two kinds of credence (...) functions—coherent ones that obey the probability axioms perfectly, and incoherent ones that don’t. An attractive response to this problem is to extend the framework of subjective Bayesianism in such a way that we can measure differences between incoherent credence functions. This lets us explain how the Bayesian ideals can be approximated by humans. I argue that we should look for a measure that captures what I call the ‘overall degree of incoherence’ of a credence function. I then examine various incoherence measures that have been proposed in the literature, and evaluate whether they are suitable for measuring overall incoherence. The competitors are a qualitative measure that relies on finding coherent subsets of incoherent credence functions, a class of quantitative measures that measure incoherence in terms of normalized Dutch book loss, and a class of distance measures that determine the distance to the closest coherent credence function. I argue that one particular Dutch book measure and a corresponding distance measure are particularly well suited for capturing the overall degree of incoherence of a credence function. (shrink)

The quantitative problem of old evidence is the problem of how to measure the degree to which e confirms h for agent A at time t when A regards e as justified at t. Existing attempts to solve this problem have applied the e-difference approach, which compares A's probability for h at t with what probability A would assign h if A did not regard e as justified at t. The quantitative problem has been widely regarded as unsolvable (...) primarily on the grounds that the e-difference approach suffers from intractable problems. Various philosophers have proposed that 'Bayesianism' should be rejected as a research strategy in confirmation theory in part because of the unsolvability of this problem. I develop a version of the e-difference approach which overcomes these problems and possesses various advantages (but also certain limitations). I develop an alternative 'theistic' approach which handles many cases that my development of the e-difference approach does not handle. I conclude with an assessment of the significance of the quantitative problem for Bayesianism and argue that this problem is misunderstood in so far as it is regarded as unsolvable, and in so far as it is regarded as a problem only for Bayesians. (shrink)

This study is intended to provide in-depth insights into how design thinking and creativity issues are understood and possibly evolve in the course of design discussions in a company context. For that purpose, we use the seminar transcripts of the Design Thinking Research Symposium 12 (DTRS12) dataset “Tech-centred Design Thinking: Perspectives from a Rising Asia,” which are primarily concerned with how Korean companies implement design thinking and what role designers currently play. We employed a novel method of information processing based (...) on constructed dynamic semantic networks to investigate the seminar discussions according to company representatives and company size. We compared the quantitative dynamics in two seminars: the first involved managerial representatives of four companies, and the second involved specialized designers and management of a design center of single company. On the basis of dynamic semantic networks, we quantified the changes in four semantic measures—abstraction, polysemy, information content, and pairwise word similarity—in chronologically reconstructed individual design-thinking processes. Statistical analyses show that design thinking in the seminar with four companies, exhibits significant differences in the dynamics of abstraction, polysemy, and information content, compared to the seminar with the design center of single company. Both the decrease in polysemy and abstraction and the increase in information content in the individual design-thinking processes in the seminar with four companies indicate that design managers are focused on more concrete design issues, with more information and less ambiguous content to the final design product. By contrast, specialized designers manifest more abstract thinking and appear to exhibit a slightly higher level of divergence in their design processes. The results suggest that design thinking and creativity issues are articulated differently depending on designer roles and the company size. (shrink)

Conventional quantitative methods for the measurement of organizational legitimacy consider mainly three sources that make judgments about organizations visible: news media, accreditation bodies, and surveys. Over the last decade, however, social media have enabled ordinary citizens to bypass the gatekeeping function of these institutional evaluators and autonomously make individual judgments public. This inclusion of voices beyond functional and formally organized stakeholder groups potentially pluralizes the ongoing discussions about organizations. The individual judgments in blogs, tweets, and Facebook posts give indication (...) about the broader fit between an organization’s perceived behavior and heterogeneous social norms and therefore constitute an indicator of organizational legitimacy that can be accessed and measured. We propose the use of social media data and sentiment analysis to study the affect-based responses to organizational actions by citizens. We critically discuss and compare the method with existing quantitative methods for legitimacy measurement and apply them to a recent case in the banking industry. We discuss the value of the method for studying the process of legitimacy construction as the expression and negotiation of normative judgments about organizations by various evaluators. (shrink)

There is a standard story told about the rise and fall of ordinary language philosophy: it was a widespread, if not dominant, approach to philosophy in Great Britain in the aftermath of World War II up until the early 1960s, but with the development of systematic approaches to the study of language—formal semantic theories on one hand and Gricean pragmatics on the other—ordinary language philosophy more or less disappeared. In this paper we present quantitative evidence to evaluate the standard (...) story of the rise and fall of ordinary language philosophy, building on the topic model of over 30,000 philosophy articles in Weatherson (2022). Using a combination of qualitative judgment and a topic-model-based measurement of similarity between individual articles, we find evidence that supports the first part of the standard story, according to which ordinary language philosophy arises in the 1940s, peaks between the early 1950s and the late 1960s, and then rapidly declines. But we argue that there is also evidence of a "new wave" of ordinary language philosophy in the early 21st century that defies the second part of the standard story. (shrink)

The field of psychology has emphasized quantitative laboratory research as a defining character of its role as a science, and has generally de-emphasized qualitative research and theorizing throughout its history. This article reviews some of the effects of this emphasis in two areas, intelligence testing, and learning and memory. On one side, quantitative measurement produced the widely used IQ test but shed little light on the construct of intelligence and its role in human cognition. On the other side, (...) reductive quantification and experimental constraints limited the investigation and understanding of human memory systems and complex learning throughout the first century of the field’s history. Recent research under fewer constraints has made greater progress in these areas. (shrink)

We draw insights from Activity Theory within the field of human-computer interaction to quantitatively measure a mobile in-store experience (MIX), which includes the suite of shopping activities and retail services that a consumer can engage in when using their mobile device in brick-and-mortar stores. We developed and validated a nine-item, formative MIX index using survey data collected from fashion consumers in the United States (n= 1,267), United Kingdom (n= 370), Germany (n= 362), and France (n= 219). As survey measures of (...) consumer engagement in omnichannel retailing using a mobile device, the index items with stronger factor loadings described in-store shopping activities whereas those with weaker factor loadings described activities related to behavioral targeting and social networking. These results suggest that retailers should give consumers the autonomy to independently find, evaluate and purchase merchandise in brick-and-mortar stores, thereby enabling them to co-create personalized shopping experiences as active participants within an omnichannel retail servicescape. Our findings also suggest that retailers should provide consumers with more authentic ways to build community and brand affiliations than mobile marketing and social media promotions. In-store activities should not simply be a migration of pre-existing e-commerce capabilities onto mobile devices. An engaging mobile in-store experience should be an amalgam of physical and digital activities that produce a seamless shopping journey and leverage the unique properties of mobile devices – ultra-portability, location sensitivity, untetheredness, and personalization. Retail executives can use the validated MIX index to prepare strategic investments in mobile technology applications and capabilities for retail stores within their omnichannel operations. The nine-item MIX index is also well-suited for consumer surveys, which also makes it an attractive measure of consumer engagement in omnichannel retailing for future academic research. (shrink)

The blood oxygen level dependent effect that provides the contrast in functional magnetic resonance imaging has been demonstrated to affect the linewidth of spectral peaks as measured with magnetic resonance spectroscopy and through this, may be used as an indirect measure of cerebral blood flow related to neural activity. By acquiring MR-spectra interleaved with frames without water suppression, it may be possible to image the BOLD effect and associated metabolic changes simultaneously through changes in the linewidth of the unsuppressed water (...) peak. The purpose of this study was to implement this approach with the MEGA-PRESS sequence, widely considered to be the standard sequence for quantitative measurement of GABA at field strengths of 3 T and lower, to observe how changes in both glutamate and GABA levels may relate to changes due to the BOLD effect. MR-spectra and fMRI were acquired from the occipital cortex of 20 healthy participants whilst undergoing intrascanner visual stimulation in the form of a red and black radial checkerboard, alternating at 8 Hz, in 90 s blocks comprising 30 s of visual stimulation followed by 60 s of rest. Results show very strong agreement between the changes in the linewidth of the unsuppressed water signal and the canonical haemodynamic response function as well as a strong, negative, but not statistically significant, correlation with the Glx signal as measured from the OFF spectra in MEGA-PRESS pairs. Findings from this experiment suggest that the unsuppressed water signal provides a reliable measure of the BOLD effect and that correlations with associated changes in GABA and Glx levels may also be measured. However, discrepancies between metabolite levels as measured from the difference and OFF spectra raise questions regarding the reliability of the respective methods. (shrink)

It is often said that one person or society is `freer' than another, or that people have a right to equal freedom, or that freedom should be increased or even maximized. Such quantitative claims about freedom are of great importance to us, forming an essential part of our political discourse and theorizing. Yet their meaning has been surprisingly neglected by political philosophers until now. Ian Carter provides the first systematic account of the nature and importance of our judgements about (...) degrees of freedom. He begins with an analysis of the normative assumptions behind the claim that individuals are entitled to a measure of freedom, and then goes on to ask whether it is indeed conceptually possible to measure freedom. Adopting a coherentist approach, the author argues for a conception of freedom that not only reflects commonly held intuitions about who is freer than who but is also compatible with a liberal or freedom-based theory of justice. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of the notion of coherence by explicating in probabilistic terms, step by step, what seem to be our most basic intuitions about that notion, to wit, that coherence is a matter of hanging or fitting together, and that coherence is a matter of degree. A qualitative theory of coherence will serve as a stepping stone to formulate a set of quantitative measures of coherence, each of which seems to capture well the (...) aforementioned intuitions. Subsequently it will be argued that one of those measures does better than the others in light of some more specific intuitions about coherence. This measure will be defended against two seemingly obvious objections. (shrink)

Since the advent of the twenty-first century, science has experienced a crisis pertaining to the replicability of quantitative research findings, which has become known as the ‘replication crisis’. The replication crisis has particularly afflicted research in the behavioural sciences, and psychology in particular. Given the relevance of psychology to education, it is unsurprising that the replication crisis also presents an issue for quantitative educational research, thus potentially compromising its practical usefulness. This article outlines the replication crisis in psychology, (...) and highlights its significance for quantitative educational research. Greater methodological rigour, aimed at addressing methodological deficiencies in the conduct of scientific research, has been suggested as a response to the replication crisis. Following a review of various calls for greater methodological rigour, the current article argues that, whilst methodological deficiencies may be a contributory factor, there is potentially a more fundamental reason for the replication crisis. The case is made that the non-separability of a measured attribute from the measurement instrument, and the irreducible uncertainty in unmeasured attributes, may be the principal reasons for the replication crisis in psychology and education. Implications of such an explanation for the crisis are articulated in relation to the evidence-based policy agenda in education. (shrink)

Quantitative health risk assessment is a procedure for estimating the likelihood that exposure to environmental contaminants will produce certain adverse health effects, most commonly cancer. One instance of its use has been a California air toxics public “right-to-know” law. This article examines the ways in which credible health risk measurements were produced and challenged during the implementation of the California public policy. Fieldwork and documentary analysis finds that stakeholders negotiated within the formal constraints of the risk assessment procedures but (...) still expressed their competing visions for the implementation of the risk communication policy. The abstract results of the method were contextualized according to different time frames and allocations of uncertainty. Furthermore, the article demonstrates that the political process privileged consistency of measurement over accuracy, revealing political negotiations at a fundamentally technical level. The struggle and variation in interpretations can be explained best by the demand to organize the program around the discordant values of democratic accountability and technical efficiency. (shrink)

Measurement practices are central to most sciences. In the human sciences, however, it remains controversial whether the measurement of human attributes—depression, happiness, intelligence, etc.—has been successful. Are, say, widely used depression questionnaires valid measuring instruments? Can we trust self-reported happiness scales to deliver quantitative measurements as it is sometimes claimed? These and related questions are till today hotly disputed. There are two main frameworks under which human measurements are studied and criticized. One is the so-called construct validity framework. (...) Here, criticisms to human measurements are typically of the form “this instrument is not valid: it does not actually measure the attribute we set out to measure”. The second framework is the standard typology of measurement scales (nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio). Human measurements are commonly challenged for being merely ordinal—not quantitative: interval or ratio—despite the fact that many researchers use measurement results as if they were quantitative. The first part of the dissertation studies how adequate these frameworks are for evaluating measuring instruments and the inferences they afford. Regarding the concept of validity, it is commonly understood unconditionally, that is, without restricting validity judgments about measuring instruments to context-specific situations. Instruments are said to be (in)valid simpliciter. In Chapter 2, I argue against this conception of validity and in favor of a contextual one. Regarding the second main framework, the standard typology of scales is typically linked to a set of prescriptions regarding (un)justified measurement inferences. I call this classification-cum-prescriptions the “received view” on measurement scales. In chapters 3 and 4, I question the idea that the received view is an impeccable guide for clarifying the kinds of inferences we are licensed to make from measurement results in human science contexts. I motivate general doubts about the adequacy of the received view in Chapter 3, and I articulate these doubts in detail for the specific case of average group comparisons in Chapter 4. The upshot of this first part of the dissertation is a deeper awareness of the complexity surrounding which inferences can legitimately be made from measuring instruments. The first part of the dissertation is largely framed under the assumption that some human attributes are indeed quantitative, even if they are not currently being measured quantitatively. The second part addresses two important issues raised by that assumption. Chapter 5 tackles the so-called “quantity objection”: that human science attributes are themselves not quantitative, thus they cannot be quantitatively measured. This objection has been deployed to argue against optimistic positions regarding human quantification. I argue that the quantity objection is not successful in this sense—it begs the question to these optimistic human scientists that, just like their colleagues in the physical sciences have done, postulate theoretical quantitative attributes as working hypotheses. But what does treating human attributes quantitatively as working hypotheses amount to? And what are, or can be, “amounts” of depression, happiness, etc.? Chapter 6 argues that there is not one but various approaches for quantitatively conceiving of human attributes, each with its own success conditions. This chapter offers a conceptual framework for making progress on debates about controversial human measurements. (shrink)

With the emergence of large digitized collections of historical texts, scholarship in the humanities has increasingly turned to studying texts as data. This article argues that seeing text as data is particularly apt for the study of conceptual history. The quantitative perspective allows for rethinking the analytical terminology used to study the transformation of political and social terminology. Further, quantitative conceptual history requires re-evaluation on four levels. First, it forces scholars of conceptual history to reconsider the role of (...) reception in the spread and lexicalization of linguistic innovations. Second, it forces them to assess how to interpret quantitative analyses of linguistic change. Third, the use of quantitative methods calls for clarity in describing what is being measured and what is being interpreted based on quantitative analyses. Fourth, the use of machine-learning methods for conceptual history should remain careful. They can be very useful for exploration, but should be combined with count-based methods to provide concrete proof. (shrink)