Relationships
dgillm...@gmail.com
Dear Colleagues,
I have a question about relationships, which has come up in some work I doing with a colleague to create a framework for the information (meanings, inferences) contained in qualitative data. Qualitative data are videos of interviews, images of artwork, focus group transcripts, etc. They require a researcher to analyze the contents of a file to uncover what they are about. Part of that “aboutness” includes relationships between things found in the files and what those relationships might mean.
Two kinds of relations, time and space proximity, are objective in the sense the closeness can be measured without caring about a meaning. Importantly, the same measurement of closeness may not end up being meaningful in the same way each time.
The question is whether there are other relations that are objective in the same way. For example, a parent/child relationship as seen in some video might be implied, but I don’t see any way that can be measured or in any other way objectively determined just from observing (not analyzing) the contents of a file. So, we know there are relations that don’t qualify as an answer to the question. Maybe an asynchronous sequential relation counts. Are there others?
This question might have been discussed earlier in the life of this email forum, and if so please direct me to the thread. In any case, I am eager to hear your opinions.
Thanks.
Regards,
Dan Gillman
PS There are purposeful differences between my usage of measure and relation on the one hand and measurement and relationship on the other. The difference in both cases is type/instance.
Alex Shkotin
Dear Dan,
To better understand your question, I'll describe the topic from the perspective of axiomatic theories and their models.
Take, for example, Hilbert's axiomatics for Euclidean geometry.
There are only two primary relations there: lies on and betweenness. All other relations will be defined through them.
Now, if I look at two non-intersecting triangles, one of which is inside the other, there is a relation "within" between them, which will be defined in the theory.
Is this relation "within" objective for you?
And what is "an asynchronous sequential relation"? Can you give an example?
If we look at "videos of interviews, images of artwork, focus group transcripts, etc." as a model for one or another theory we get one or another description of this particular "qualitative data". Or maybe you are talking about phenomenological relations?
But in this case, the parent-child relationship can only be determined by tracing it back in time to the moment of birth, and even then only for the mother.
Most relations have definitions which are very sophisticated.
We may take OBO Foundry Relation Ontology (AIed:https://share.google/aimode/QoC38rEHUnSYM1mAa) to begin with phenomenological relations.
A very interesting topic.
Regards,
Alex
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dgillm...@gmail.com
Dear Alex,
Thank you for your interest.
I think I should describe an analytic scenario involving qualitative data to try to anchor my question. Imagine looking at a video of a family riding in a car on a rainy day. The family consists of the mother, the father, and a pre-verbal one year old child. The child is riding in a car seat facing forward. In the video you can see each member of the family and the windshield of the car. The rain is sporadic, so the driver (the father in this case) sometimes has to turn the windshield wipers on, and sometimes they need to be off. The researcher is analyzing how parents treat their children when they get demanding.
And by the way, ignore the fact there are parent/child relationships among the participants. This is not germane.
After watching the video several times, the researcher notices the child starts to cry each time the wipers are shut off and stops when the wipers are turned back on. This cycles. Each interval of time where the wipers are switched on/off and the child reacts can be located in the video, and the length of the time interval can be measured. This is what I mean by objective. It is up to the researcher to decide if the coincidence (wipers off / child cries) is significant, and this might depend on how quickly and regularly the child reacts. So, the measure of the interval is a clue for the researcher. In any case there is a time-dependent relationship between what the wipers and child are doing.
This example applies to time, and it shouldn’t be hard to find examples applicable to location, which are also objective in the same way. Are there other kinds of relations besides time and location that are objective?
I hope this is clearer. At this stage, I am not interested in finding a fundamental set of relations. I am interested in knowing if there are additional relations that have “objective” as a property in the sense described here.
Thanks.
Regards,
Dan
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