RE: [talking-measurement] Michell and Maraun
Tom Bramley
Dear Paul and others,
Thank you for re-igniting some debate on this topic – I always found the discussions on this group very informative.
I’d just like to pick up on your (Paul) comment below about Michell and Maraun. It could be taken to imply that they are saying similar things, but on my reading they are saying very different things! I wondered if you thought their views were compatible or incompatible?
For example, I take Michell to be saying that whether an attribute like ‘dominance’ has a quantitative structure is an empirical matter that psychologists routinely fail to investigate, whereas I take Maraun to be saying that the way in which the word ‘dominance’ is used in natural language does not have the ‘grammar’ of a measurement concept (i.e. involving units, rules for taking measurements etc.). So for Michell, dominance might be quantitative and hence measurable, but it hasn’t yet been shown to be, and this is an empirical matter. For Maraun, dominance is not measurable and this is a conceptual matter.
Regards,
Tom.
Tom Bramley
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Assessment Research & Development
Cambridge Assessment
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From: talking-m...@googlegroups.com [mailto:talking-m...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Paul Barrett
Sent: 08 December 2015 06:28
To: talking-m...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: [talking-measurement] What happened to this group?
LBS: Two years and no posts. What happened? Has interest in the topic completely died out?
I suspect it’s a ‘done deal’ now among those who bother reading about such matters. There is nothing much left to talk about apart from restating the “bleeding obvious”!
For me, Joel Michell and Mike Maraun between them have set out precisely the conditions required to instantiate a claim of quantity and ’measurement’.
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Paul Barrett
Hello Tom
I’d just like to pick up on your (Paul) comment below about Michell and Maraun. It could be taken to imply that they are saying similar things, but on my reading they are saying very different things! I wondered if you thought their views were compatible or incompatible?
I’ve always seen them as complementary rather than at odds with one another.
As you say:
“I take Michell to be saying that whether an attribute like ‘dominance’ has a quantitative structure is an empirical matter that psychologists routinely fail to investigate whereas I take Maraun to be saying that the way in which the word ‘dominance’ is used in natural language does not have the ‘grammar’ of a measurement concept (i.e. involving units, rules for taking measurements etc.)”
So, Michell says start exploring (with no guarantee you’ll discover the attribute in question varies as a quantity),
and
Maraun says unless you do something to create a technical/specific definition of a construct and specify normative rules for its measurement, you are not likely to get very far.
Put another way:
Michell lays the ground-rules/axioms required to be met for a variable that is claimed to vary as a quantity. I see these as almost entirely ‘measurement oriented’.
Maraun lays down the ground-rules for attempting to claim a ‘measure’ of something is actually a measure of ‘it’. I see these as almost entirely ‘meaning’ oriented.
Yep, a crude, unsubtle distinction - but one that works for me.
I’m done ‘finessing’ .. the paragraph in Mike’s fabulous 1998 article says it all for me:
Maraun, M.D. (1998). Measurement as a Normative Practice: Implications of Wittgenstein's Philosophy for Measurement in Psychology. Theory & Psychology, 8, 4, 435-461.
“The problem is that in construct validation theory, knowing about something is confused with an understanding of the meaning of the concept that denotes that something. This is mistaken. One may know more or less about it, build a correct or incorrect case about it, articulate to a greater or lesser extent the laws into which it enters, discover much, or very little about it. However, these activities all presuppose rules for the application of the concept that denotes it (e.g. intelligence, dominance). Furthermore, one must be prepared to cite these standards as justification for the claim that these empirical facts are about it.” (p. 448)
I see Michell’s position as entirely concordant with this, although he speaks primarily about the constituent properties of any measurement claimed to be a measure of ‘it’.
But I accept my own desire for ‘simplicity’ might have induced a mistaken ‘concordance’ where others like yourself have seen discord‼
Regards .. Paul
Chief Research Scientist
Cognadev.com
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Tom Bramley
Thanks Paul, this is helpful.
I don’t really see discord as such, but rather that an implication of Maraun’s work is that psychological concepts like dominance (or reading comprehension ability) have grammatical features (rules for usage) that mean that if we did discover how to use them in a measurement framework (e.g. with Lexiles) we would be changing the meaning of the concept as it currently stands. This is not a problem for technical concepts that are ‘born measurable’ as it were, but may well be for psychological concepts that have been around for centuries with no measurement connotations. Temperature might be a potential counter-example to what I am saying though.
Regards,
Tom.