ONT Re: Sequential Interactions Generating Hypotheses
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SIGH. Note 6
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Whenever we set about building a model of the reality that informs
a phenomenon of interest, it is necessary to remind ourselves from
time to time of these three contingencies of the modeling exercise:
A. The model is not the reality.
B. The model is not the appearances.
C. The appearances are not the reality.
As I mentioned, the codebook that is used to convert observations
into a dataset proper reflects an enabling hypothesis about the
nature of the reality that produces the phenomenon of interest.
No data is so raw that it has not been cooked to some degree
according to the recipe of such a codebook. Moreover, each
way of looking at the dataset embodies additional helpings
of ancillary provisions and auxiliary hypotheses.
I will next describe three closely related ways that I used to look at
the family interaction data, all of which methods are generally useful
for all sorts of QT data, such as we find in protocol analysis and in
many other areas of qualitative research that involve similar species
of "intermediate data models" (IDM's). These three paradigms are:
1. Two-Level Formal Languages (2-FL's)
2. Finite State Transitions (FST's)
3. Differential Logic (DLOG).
Jon Awbrey
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