Journal of Business Ethicsrecently published a critique of ethical practices in quantitative research by Zyphur and Pierides (J Bus Ethics 143:1–16, 2017). The authors argued that quantitative research prevents researchers from addressing urgent problems facing humanity today, such as poverty, racial inequality, and climate change. I offer comments and observations on the authors’ critique. I agree with the authors in many areas of philosophy, ethics, and social research, while making suggestions for clarification and development. Interpreting (...) the paper through the pragmatism of William James, I suggest that the authors’ arguments are unlikely to change attitudes in traditional quantitative research, though they may point the way to a new worldview, or Jamesian “sub-world,” in social research. (shrink)

In this article, the co-editors of the Leadership and Ethics: Quantitative Analysis section of the journal outline some of the key issues about conducting quantitative research at the intersection of business, ethics, and leadership. They offer guidance for authors by explaining the types of papers that are often rejected and how to avoid some common pitfalls that lead to rejection. They also offer some ideas for future research by drawing upon the opinions of four noted experts (...) in the field to consider the types of research questions we should be asking, the types of theory we should be building, the types of models we should be testing, and the types of methods we should be using. (shrink)

Researchers misunderstand their role in creating ethical problems when they allow dogmas to purportedly divorce scientists and scientific practices from the values that they embody. Cortina, Edwards, and Powell help us clarify and further develop our position by responding to our critique of, and alternatives to, this misleading separation. In this rebuttal, we explore how the desire to achieve the separation of facts and values is unscientific on the very terms endorsed by its advocates—this separation is refuted by empirical observation. (...) We show that positivists like Cortina and Edwards offer no rigorous theoretical or empirical justifications to substantiate their claims, let alone critique ours. Following Powell, we point to how classical pragmatism understands ‘purpose’ in scientific pursuits while also providing an alternative to the dogmas of positivism and related philosophical positions. In place of dogmatic, unscientific cries about an abstract and therefore always-unobservable ‘reality,’ we invite all organizational scholars to join us in shifting the discussion about quantitative research towards empirically grounded scientific inquiry. This makes the ethics of actual people and their practices central to quantitative research, including the thoughts, discourses, and behaviors of researchers who are always in particular places doing particular things. We propose that quantitative researchers can thus start to think about their research practices as a kind of work, rather than having the status of a kind of dogma. We conclude with some implications that this has for future research and education, including the relevance of research and research methods. (shrink)

In this article, the co-editors of the corporate responsibility: quantitative issues section of the journal provide an overview of the quantitative CSR field and offer some new perspectives on where the field is going. They highlight key issues in developing impactful, theory-driven, and ethically grounded research and call for research that examines complex problems facing businesses and the society (e.g., big data and artificial intelligence, political polarization, and the role of CSR in generating social impact). By (...) examining topics that are under-researched, forward-looking, and socially oriented, scholars can expand the boundary of CSR’s substantive domain and produce research that helps businesses act in a long-term, socially responsible way in this quickly evolving, turbulent environment. They also discuss ways to enhance the methodological rigor of quantitative CSR research and encourage scholars to employ cutting-edge, innovative methods to shed light on the micro-level mechanisms of CSR and reveal patterns and relationships hidden in unstructured big data. (shrink)

In this two-volume set, Larry D. Barnett delves into the macrosociological sources of law concerned with society-important social activities in a structurally complex, democratically governed nation. Barnett explores why, when, and where particular proscriptions and prescriptions of law on key social activities arise, persist, and change. The first volume, Societal Agents in Law: A Macrosociological Approach, puts relevant doctrines of law into a macrosociological framework, uses the findings of quantitative research to formulate theorems that identify the impact of (...) several society-level agents on doctrines of law, and takes the reader through a number of case analyses. The second volume, Societal Agents in Law: Quantitative Research, reports original multivariate statistical studies of sociological determinants of law on specific types of key social activities. Taken together, the two volumes offer an alternative to the almost-total monopoly of theory and descriptive scholarship in the macrosociology of law, comparative law, and history of law, and underscore the value of a mixed empirical/theoretical approach. (shrink)

Self-monitoring theory explains the individual differences in using interpersonal adjustment techniques like self-control, self-regulation, and self-presentation. Self-monitoring plays a key role for understanding the social life. Therefore, it has been one of most popular research topics in social psychology. The aim of this study is to find out if there is a meaningful relationship between religious orientation and self-monitoring, and to determine the direction of the relationship if it exists. Besides, examining the effect of religious group membership on self-monitoring (...) is another aim of this study. In accordance with this purpose, Religious Orientation Scale and Revised Self-Monitoring Scale are applied to sample group which consists of 437 female and 369 male participants aged16 to 65+ living in Bursa. The results has revealed that there is a meaningful positive correlation between intrinsic religious orientation and self-monitoring. In addition, no meaningful relationship between religious group membership and self-monitoring has been confirmed.Summary: The adaptation process of the human being as a social creature starts in a mother's womb and becomes more complicated in consequence of coming into the world which is full of stimulus. In the beginning, this process has only a physical aspect, but with the inclusion of emotional, cognitive, and social factors over time turns into developmental tasks that people will struggle throughout their lives. The social development involves the process of becoming of the individual as an organic part of the society. As the individual realizes the existence of the other, he/she develops similar patterns of behavior that can be approved by the other. Because the meaningful relationships that form the backbone of social development constitute an important part of the self. Belonging is one of the main needs, that the individual shapes his emotions, actions, and decisions more or less in line with this need in order not to encounter the possibility of social exclusion. While belonging is a universal need for every healthy individual, there are differences between individuals in terms of directing the course of the relationship, role sharing, and using situational clues. Individual differences in how people construct interpersonal processes led Mark Snyder to systematize and theorize the concept of self-monitoring. Self-monitoring is a concept that expresses individuals' control of self-presentation, expressive behavior, and non-verbal emotional expression and their regulation. Accordingly, individuals with a high tendency to shape their behavior according to the context are classified as high self-monitors and those with low tendency are classified as low self-monitors. It can be said that adherence to religion, which is one of the determinants of social behavior, is related to self-monitoring. In this context, the main subject of this study is the relationship between self-monitoring and religiosity. The study aims to examine the effect of intrinsic-extrinsic religiosity on individuals' self-monitoring levels. Besides, as a form of religiosity, to reveal whether religious group religiosity affects self-monitoring, the study examines also self-monitoring levels of individuals belonging to the religious group and those who are not.The sample of the study was selected by a simple random sampling method and it consists of 806 participants aged 16 to 65+ living in Bursa in 2017. 437 (54.2%) of the participants in the research are women and 369 (45.8%) are men. In this study, a relational screening model was used for determining the presence, direction, and degree of the relationship between the variables. The questionnaire technique was preferred as the method of gathering information. The questionnaire was arranged in a way that does not require asking the participant any other questions apart from the questions on the form. The questionnaire form used in this research consists of 43 items. At the beginning of the questionnaire, there is a 9-item personal information form that includes demographic items consisting of age, gender, educational status, marital status, occupation, place of residence, socio-economic status, levels of subjective religious involvement, and religious group membership. For the measurement of self-monitoring, a 12-item "Self-Monitoring Scale", which was developed by Mark Snyder, revised by Richard Lennox and Raymond Wolfe and adapted by İlknur Özalp Türetgen and Sevim Cesur to Turkish (α =.80) was used. For the measurement of religious orientation, a 22-item “Religious Orientation Scale” developed by Gordon Allport and Michael Ross and adapted to Turkish by Fatma Gül Cirhinlioğlu was used (α =.90). Data collected through scales were processed by One Way Variance Analysis (ANOVA), t-Test, Pearson Correlation Analysis, and Simple Linear Regression Analysis and turned into research findings.According to the results of the simple linear correlation analysis conducted to reveal whether there is a relationship between the self-monitoring scores of the participants and the intrinsic religious orientation scores, there is a positive and significant relationship between the variables (r = 0.102, p = 0.004 0.05). The result of the correlation analysis between self-monitoring and the level of subjective religious involvement shows that no significant relationship is found (r = 0.051, p = 0.146> 0.05).This research expected that there was a negative relationship between self-monitoring and intrinsic religious orientation. However, the analyses has not reported anticipated results as addressed in the previous research. Therefore, this study opens the door for asking new questions about the subject. Religious groups, by their very nature, can refer the individual to self-presentation control, obedience, to act as deemed appropriate by the group, to adapt to the group, to change behavior without attitude change, and therefore, to attitude-behavior inconsistency. It can be argued that not only religious groups but, by their nature, all social groups create harmony-oriented pressure on the individual. Therefore, it can be predicted that belonging to a group, in general, may have a significant effect on the level of self-monitoring. The high self-monitoring scores of the participants, whether religious or non-religious group members of this study may have reduced the observability of the difference between the two groups. Therefore, repeating the study on a different sample may produce different results. (shrink)

The tension between the generality of approach in causally-driven quantitative educational research and the individuality of particular cases is exemplified in the types of reasoning employed. Unlike the scientific search for antecedents, still popular in some forms of educational research, investigating particular persons and policies necessarily requires a form of practical reasoning. In order to ease this tension between qualitative and quantitative research, this essay asks questions as to what is to be described and how (...) this is to be done. Responding to these questions, it is argued, necessarily draws attention to a range of ethical issues often ignored. (shrink)

The tension between the generality of approach in causally-driven quantitative educational research and the individuality of particular cases is exemplified in the types of reasoning employed. Unlike the scientific search for antecedents, still popular in some forms of educational research, investigating particular persons and policies necessarily requires a form of practical reasoning. In order to ease this tension between qualitative and quantitative research, this essay asks questions as to what is to be described and how (...) this is to be done. Responding to these questions, it is argued, necessarily draws attention to a range of ethical issues often ignored. (shrink)

This book is a crystallization of author Chong Ho Yu's contemplation on the meaning of quantitative methods from the perspectives of history and the philosophy of science. Emphasizing the importance of a data analyst 'always knowing where the numbers come from,' Yu broadens the search to include a gamut of questions exploring the foundations of quantitative research. This informative book is written for readers with an intermediate knowledge of statistics and philosophy.

Quantitative researchers often discuss research ethics as if specific ethical problems can be reduced to abstract normative logics (e.g., virtue ethics, utilitarianism, deontology). Such approaches overlook how values are embedded in every aspect of quantitative methods, including ‘observations,’ ‘facts,’ and notions of ‘objectivity.’ We describe how quantitative research practices, concepts, discourses, and their objects/subjects of study have always been value-laden, from the invention of statistics and probability in the 1600s to their subsequent adoption as a (...) logic made to appear as if it exists prior to, and separate from, ethics and values. This logic, which was embraced in the Academy of Management from the 1960s, casts management researchers as ethical agents who ought to know about a reality conceptualized as naturally existing in the image of statistics and probability (replete with ‘constructs’), while overlooking that S&P logic and practices, which researchers made for themselves, have an appreciable role in making the world appear this way. We introduce a different way to conceptualize reality and ethics, wherein the process of scientific inquiry itself requires an examination of its own practices and commitments. Instead of resorting to decontextualized notions of ‘rigor’ and its ‘best practices,’ quantitative researchers can adopt more purposeful ways to reason about the ethics and relevance of their methods and their science. We end by considering implications for addressing ‘post truth’ and ‘alternative facts’ problems as collective concerns, wherein it is actually the pluralistic nature of description that makes defending a collectively valuable version of reality so important and urgent. (shrink)

For this issue of JBE, Zyphur and Pierides :1–16, 2017) have written a paper on a concept that they have labeled relational validity. The purpose of the paper and of their advocacy for the concept of relational validity is to improve the way that quantitative research is done by expanding our understanding of its ethics-laden aspects. I agree entirely with the authors that every decision regarding QR is an ethics-laden one and that our research as a whole (...) would be improved by recognition of this fact. I disagree with the authors regarding some of the ways that this improvement might be brought about. (shrink)

This essay concerns the extent to which quantitative research in management and organizational studies is divorced from ethics, as alleged in a recent JBE editorial by Zyphur and Pierides. After carefully examining the criticisms set forth by Zyphur and Pierides and the merits of the alternative they propose, I conclude that the problems with QR and the researchers who conduct it are arguably much less extreme that Zyphur and Pierides claim. This conclusion is informed by a sampling of (...) QR studies recently published in management journals, which could be further corroborated by a more thorough review and evaluation of QR studies using principles drawn from the ethics literature. I believe this assessment would indicate that, despite room for improvement, QR and ethics can and do peacefully coexist, and quantitative researchers are largely aware of the problems and opportunities associated with integrating their work with ethics. (shrink)

Quantitative research studies examining the effects of literacy instruction set in social studies classrooms (grades 6-12) on students’ academic content learning and reading comprehension are synthesized using meta-analytic techniques. An extensive search of the scholarly literature between 1983 and 2013 yielded a total of twelve intervention studies that provided literacy instruction to secondary students within social studies classes and quantitatively measured content learning outcomes, reading comprehension, or both. Findings revealed that content learning outcomes were consistently improved with instruction (...) that included text-processing activities such as summarizing and generating questions. While many social studies teachers do not provide explicit reading supports, in part because they perceive that the time needed to do so is prohibitive, the findings of this synthesis suggest that sound reading practices hold promise as a means through which teachers can help students better access social studies content, thus improving student learning outcomes. More rigorous quantitative research is needed to further understand the causal effects of literacy practices in social studies settings. Highlights • Literacy instruction supports both reading comprehension and academic content • Literacy instruction does not negatively affect content knowledge acquisition. • Few studies investigate the effects of literacy instruction in social studies. • More research is needed to explore the effects of literacy instruction in social studies. (shrink)

Yarkoni argues that one solution is to abandon quantitative methods for qualitative ones. While we agree that qualitative methods are undervalued, we argue that both are necessary for thoroughgoing psychological research, complementing one another through the use of causal analysis. We illustrate how directed acyclic graphs can bridge qualitative and quantitative methods, thereby fostering understanding between different psychological methodologies.

After reading chapter two of Russell’s In Praise of Idleness, which discusses the history of the concept of knowledge, and the article by Ranjay Gulati whocommented the wars of tribes (“Tent poles, tribalism, and boundary spanning: The rigor-relevant debate in management research”), this inspired me an image of gladiator battles between different groups in the scientific world. Inspired by Feyerabend’s concept of fairy tales, I illustrate the struggle between quantitative and qualitative researchers that I witnessed in my (...) class='Hi'>research career... (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)

Objectives: The objective of this research is to analyse the evolution and nature of published empirical research in the fields of medical ethics and bioethics.Design: Retrospective quantitative study of nine peer reviewed journals in the field of bioethics and medical ethics .Results: In total, 4029 articles published between 1990 and 2003 were retrieved from the journals studied. Over this period, 435 studies used an empirical design. The highest percentage of empirical research articles appeared in Nursing Ethics (...) , followed by the Journal of Medical Ethics and the Journal of Clinical Ethics . These three journals account for 84.1% of all empirical research in bioethics published in this period. The results of the χ2 test for two independent samples for the entire dataset indicate that the period 1997–2003 presented a higher number of empirical studies than did the period 1990–1996 . This increase is statistically significant . Most empirical studies employed a quantitative paradigm . The main topic of research was prolongation of life and euthanasia .Conclusions: We conclude that the proportion of empirical research in the nine journals increased steadily from 5.4% in 1990 to 15.4% in 2003. It is likely that the importance of empirical methods in medical ethics and bioethics will continue to increase. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to discuss quantitative content analysis as established in communication sciences as a method for research in business ethics. We argue that communication sciences and business ethics are neighboring disciplines, which allow the transfer of quantitative content analysis from communication sciences to business ethics. Technically, quantitative content analysis can be applied through human as well as software coding. Examples for both applications are provided and discussed. We make reference to the software (...) solutions ‘Leximancer’, ‘Crawdad’, and ‘Wordle’, and examine their suitability and limitations with regard to ethical questions for researching business ethics. We recommend a mixed‐method approach, combining human and software coding. Furthermore, we propose a three‐step process that discusses quantitative content analysis as a method for business ethics, including an ethical research objective, and most importantly, concluding with ethical reasoning and interpretation of the quantitative results. (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)

Quantitative comparison of human language and natural animal communication requires improved conceptualizations. We argue that an infrastructural approach to development and evolution incorporating an extended interpretation of the distinctions among illocution, perlocution, and meaning can help place the issues relevant to quantitative comparison in perspective. The approach can illuminate the controversy revolving around the notion of functional referentiality as applied to alarm calls, for example in the vervet monkey. We argue that referentiality offers a poor point of (...) class='Hi'>quantitative comparison across language and animal communication in the wild. Evidence shows that even the newborn human cry could be deemed to show functional referentiality according to the criteria typically invoked by advocates of referentiality in animal communication. Exploring the essence of the idea of illocution, we illustrate an important realm of commonality among animal communication systems and human language, a commonality that opens the door to more productive, quantifiable comparisons. Finally, we delineate two examples of infrastructural communicative capabilities that should be particularly amenable to direct quantitative comparison across humans and our closest relatives. (shrink)

This article deals with the objective nuances of empirical research, within the ambit of the quantitative kind. It begins with an overview of conducting empirical legal research, discussing its research design, implementation, and challenges faced. Theorizing in empirical legal scholarship comes in different forms: in some projects theories seek to provide insight into a wide range of phenomena, others are tailored to fit particular situations. In the clarification process the researcher translates abstract notions into concrete ones. (...) To convert the data into an analyzable form, empirical legal researchers make use of a variety of data-generation mechanisms. Researchers can implement random sampling in various ways depending on the nature of the problem. Data analysis enables researchers to compare their overlap. The goal of empirical legal research is to find facts about the unknown. The last step of empirical legal research is to present its results, for which, documentation is a requisite. (shrink)

(2011). Educational Research and Inquiry: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. Edited by D. Hartas. British Journal of Educational Studies: Vol. 59, Research capacity building, pp. 350-351.

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)

The aim of this article is to show that statistical analysis and hermeneutics are not mutually exclusive. Although statistical analysis may capture some patterns and regularities, statistical methods may themselves generate different types of interpretation and, in turn, give rise to even more interpretations. The discussion is lodged within the context of a quantitative analysis of dream content. I attempted to examine the dialogical texts of reported dreams monologically, but soon found myself returning to dialogic contexts to make sense (...) of statistical patterns. One could cogently argue that the reported statistical relationships in this study, rather than pointing to any interaction among the "signifieds," speak only to the relationships among the "signifiers" that were being played out through various actors on the analytic or scientific stage, since all of the constructs used in theorizing about, interpreting, and telling dreams come from the same discursive system. (shrink)

This paper takes laptops as an example to carry out research on quantitative model of brand recognition based on sentiment analysis of big data. The basic idea is to use web crawler technology to obtain the most authentic and direct information of different laptop brands from first-line consumers from public spaces such as buyer reviews of major e-commerce platforms, including review time, text reviews, satisfaction ratings and relevant user information, etc., and then analyzes consumers’ sentimental tendencies and recognition (...) status of the product brands. This study extracted a total of 437,815 user reviews of laptops from e-commerce platforms from January 1, 2019 to December 31, 2021, and performed data preprocessing on the obtained review data, followed by sentiment dictionary construction, attribute expansion, text quantification and algorithm evaluation. This paper analyzed the information receiving and processing hierarchy of the quantitative model of brand recognition, discussed the interactive relationship between brand recognition and consumer sentiment, discussed the brand recognition bias, style and demand in the context of big data, and performed the sentiment statistics and dimension analysis in the quantitative model of brand recognition. The study results show that the quantitative model of brand recognition based on sentiment analysis of big data can transform and map the keywords in text to word vectors in the high-dimensional semantic space by performing unsupervised machine learning on the text based on artificial neural network computer bionic metaphors; the model can accumulate each brand-related buyer review in the corresponding brand recognition dimension, so as to obtain the value of each product in each dimension of brand recognition; finally, the model will add the values of each dimension of brand recognition, that is, obtain the relevant value of the sum of each brand recognition. The results of this paper may provide a reference for further research on the quantitative model of brand recognition based on sentiment analysis of big data. (shrink)

Collecting data using an appropriate sampling technique is a challenging task for a researcher to do. The researchers will be unable to collect data from all possible situations, which will preclude them from answering the study’s research questions in their current form. In light of the enormous number and variety of sampling techniques/methods available, the researcher must be knowledgeable about the differences to select the most appropriate sampling technique/method for the specific study under consideration. In this context, this study (...) also looks into the basic concepts in probability sampling, kinds of probability sampling techniques with their advantages and disadvantages. Social science researchers will benefit from this study since it will assist them in choosing the most suitable probability sampling technique for completing their research smoothly and successfully. (shrink)

For paediatric medicine to advance, research must be conducted specifically with children. Concern about poor recruitment has led to debate about payments to child research participants. Although concerns about undue influence by such ‘compensation’ have been expressed, it is useful to determine whether children can relate the time and inconvenience associated with participation to the value of payment offered. This study explores children's ability to determine fair remuneration for research participation, and reviews payments to children participating in (...) research. Forty children were interviewed before outpatient visits at two London Hospitals: Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital and the Whittington Hospital District General Hospital. Children were asked to value their involvement in two hypothetical research scenarios – the first an ‘additional blood sample’, the second also involving daily oral oil capsules taken for a fortnight before further venesection. Background knowledge about familiarity with money, and experience with hospitalisation was assessed. The mean valuation of involvement in the second scenario (£13.18) was higher than in the first (£2.84) (p<0.001). This higher valuation persisted when children were categorised into groups ‘aged 12+’ and ‘below 12’. Those undergoing a blood test on the day placed a higher valuation on participation in the second scenario (£10.43, £21.67, p=0.044). These children aged 8–16 demonstrated the capacity to discern a fair valuation for participation in medical research. The monetary sums are influenced by the time and inconvenience involved in the research, and by the extent of recent experience with hospital procedures. The authors review current ethical thinking regarding payments to child research participants and suggest that a fair wage model might be an ethically acceptable way to increase participation of children in research. (shrink)

Much is written about quantitative techniques and feminist and gender studies. Despite convincing arguments in favour of utilizing these methods, they are still largely absent in the heartland of gender studies. In this article, this is related to the observation that methods are tied to epistemological positions and consequently quantitative studies are a priori associated with overgeneralization. A new perspective – the diversity continuum – is presented in order to contextualize research and make it possible to judge (...) it relatively. This shows that quantitative research can increase the understanding of differences and similarities. Subsequently, it is discussed how quantitative research can be utilized to understand differences between people using existing basic techniques. In line with the conceptualization of diversity, this includes techniques to study intersectionality and how developments have different effects on men and women. The continuum and techniques are illustrated by an example of political interest. (shrink)

Much critical attention has been paid to the use of qualitative research in the medical sciences, with proponents advancing discussions of what it is and how it may be appraised, and critics arguing that it is of exploratory use only. Using philosophical analysis, I argue that such discussions are flawed insofar as they endorse the idea that qualitative and quantitative research are epistemically distinct categories involving different types of knowledge. Rather, I claim that such approaches are actually (...) culturally distinct involving different intellectual histories. Thus highlighting that qualitative research may not necessarily be exploratory, and that the qualitative-quantitative divide could be closed through the development of innovative social strategies. This makes possible not only shared standard setting practices, but also novel techniques which could optimise medical research to improve health care and save lives. (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)

Central Asian researchers are underrepresented in the global research production in social sciences, resulting in a limited Central Asian perspective on many social issues. To stimulate the production of local knowledge, it is important to develop strong research cultures, including knowledge of ethical practices in research with human participants. There is currently scarce evidence about research ethics regulations used by social science researchers working in the Central Asian region. This article reports findings from an online survey (...) conducted in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan ( n = 296) from October 2021 to January 2022. Focusing on three Central Asian countries, this article addresses the following research questions: What are the attitudes and practices of social science researchers based in Central Asia toward research ethics regulations and research ethics committees (RECs)? Is research ethics training associated with improved attitudes and practices in relation to research ethics among social scientists based in Central Asia? Is research experience associated with improved attitudes and practices in relation to research ethics among social scientists based in Central Asia? Regression analyses results demonstrate that locally based social scientists with prior research ethics training implement ethical procedures in their empirical research practice more often compared to researchers without any prior research ethics training. The preliminary findings indicate that research ethics training is positively associated with Central Asia-based social science researchers’ engagement in ethical research, thus potentially increasing the amount and quality of empirical social science research produced in the region. (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)

This paper outlines a critique of the use of the genetic variance–covariance matrix (G), one of the central concepts in the modern study of natural selection and evolution. Specifically, I argue that for both conceptual and empirical reasons, studies of G cannot be used to elucidate so-called constraints on natural selection, nor can they be employed to detect or to measure past selection in natural populations – contrary to what assumed by most practicing biologists. I suggest that the search for (...) a general solution to the difficult problem of identifying causal structures given observed correlation’s has led evolutionary quantitative geneticists to substitute statistical modeling for the more difficult, but much more valuable, job of teasing apart the many possible causes underlying the action of natural selection. Hence, the entire evolutionary quantitative genetics research program may be in need of a fundamental reconsideration of its goals and how they correspond to the array of mathematical and experimental techniques normally employed by its practitioners. (shrink)

This paper challenges the common assumption that some phenotypic traits are quantitative while others are qualitative. The distinction between these two kinds of traits is widely influential in biological and biomedical research as well as in scientific education and communication. This is probably due to both historical and epistemological reasons. However, the quantitative/qualitative distinction involves a variety of simplifications on the genetic causes of phenotypic variability and on the development of complex traits. Here, I examine three cases (...) from the life sciences that show inconsistencies in the distinction: Mendelian traits, Mendelian diseases, and polygenic mental disorders. I show that these traits can be framed both quantitatively and qualitatively depending, for instance, on the methods through which they are investigated and on specific epistemic purposes. This suggests that the received view of quantitative and qualitative traits has a limited heuristic power—limited to some local contexts or to the specific methodologies adopted. Throughout the paper, I provide directions for framing phenotypes beyond the quantitative/qualitative distinction. I conclude by pointing at the necessity of developing a principled characterisation of what phenotypic traits, in general, are. (shrink)

​This contributed volume gives access to semiotic researches adopting a quantitative stance. European semiotics is traditionally based on immanent methodologies: meaning is seen as an autonomous dimension of human existence, whose laws can be investigated via purely qualitative analytical and reflexive analysis. Today, researches crossing disciplinary boundaries reveal the limitations of such an homogeneous practice. In particular, two families of quantitative research strategies can be identified. On the one hand, researchers wish to naturalize meaning, by making semiotic (...) results interact with those coming from Neurophysiological and psychological sciences. On the other hand, statistical and computational tools are adopted to work on linguistic and multimedia corpora. The book acts to put the two approaches into dialogue. (shrink)

In this paper, we provide a re-interpretation of qualitative and quantitative modeling from a representationalist perspective. In this view, both approaches attempt to construct abstract representations of empirical relational structures. Whereas quantitative research uses variable-based models that abstract from individual cases, qualitative research favors case-based models that abstract from individual characteristics. Variable-based models are usually stated in the form of quantified sentences. This syntactic structure implies that sentences about individual cases are derived using deductive reasoning. In (...) contrast, case-based models are usually stated using context-dependent existential sentences. This syntactic structure implies that sentences about other cases are justifiable by inductive reasoning. We apply this representationalist perspective to the problems of generalization and replication. Using the analytical framework of modal logic, we argue that the modes of reasoning are often not only applied to the context that has been studied empirically, but also on a between-contexts level. Consequently, quantitative researchers mostly adhere to a top-down strategy of generalization, whereas qualitative researchers usually follow a bottom-up strategy of generalization. Depending on which strategy is employed, the role of replication attempts is very different. In deductive reasoning, replication attempts serve as empirical tests of the underlying theory. Therefore, failed replications imply a faulty theory. From an inductive perspective, however, replication attempts serve to explore the scope of the theory. Consequently, failed replications do not question the theory per se, but help to shape its boundary conditions. We conclude that quantitative research may benefit from a bottom-up generalization strategy as it is employed in most qualitative research programs. Inductive reasoning forces us to think about the boundary conditions of our theories and provides a framework for generalization beyond statistical testing. In this perspective, failed replications are just as informative as successful replications, because they help to explore the scope of our theories. (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)