Thank you, Donald, for forwarding this email to me - I had no idea that I
had provoked such a considered and thoughtful response all those years
ago! Though I am not subscribed to edstat these days, it tempts me to
rejoin - I miss the Big Issues!
>Ronan's definition introduces the important concept of a "meas-
>urement process" -- a process that we use to measure the values
>of a property. For any given property of entities, researchers
>may view the property as if there is one specific property, but
>there may be several ways of measuring the value of the property
>in entities.
This is something I introduce because I think that it is an important
aspect of understanding how science constructs knowledge. The decisions
about what science should be about and the decisions about what are the
properties to be measured are socially constructed. For years, I used to
teach a class on 'measuring health and disease' - incidence, prevalence,
various standard mortality rates (infant, neonatal) - and so on. I now
feel that the most interesting thing is not how we measure disease but
how we define disease. Homosexuality use to be a disease. My students
argue as to whether a psychologically-induced paralysis is a disease or
not (I have a fascinating case history from my psych days). And so on.
The important thing is that what we see as an entity and what we see as a
property are themselves the legitimate - and important - objects of
science. Hence my desire to call into question the act of measurement as
problematic.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
_/_/_/ _/_/ _/_/_/ _/ Ronan M Conroy ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ Lecturer in Biostatistics
_/_/_/ _/ _/_/_/ _/ Royal College of Surgeons
_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ Dublin 2, Ireland
_/ _/ _/_/ _/_/_/ _/ +353 1 402 2431 (fax 2329)
http://www.rcsi.ie
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
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