Indicators
The syntactic vision and the semantic vision (part one)
Abstract
Assumption (which also serves as an abstract)
This essay criticizes a series of explicit theses and assumptions about the nature and function of indicators and, consequently, a series of procedures deriving from these theses and assumptions, namely:
1. the assumption that they are only used in the social sciences;
2. the gross tendency to confuse them with operational definitions; or
3. the almost universal thesis that all overly general and theoretically important characteristics require indicators;
4. the range of interpretations about the relationship between an indicator and indicated concept, all of which are inspired by the desire to invoke the dreaded term “semantics”, which refers to the discipline that is rightly considered to be the most dangerous enemy of the objectivist view of science;
5. the predominantly or exclusively syntactic interpretation of the validity, in other words, the degree of correspondence (I find it difficult not to use the adjective “semantic”) between an indicator and the indicated concept;
6. the resulting intention of measuring validity with different coefficients;
7. the idea of the illegitimacy of establishing a relationship between indicators, because each characteristic concept is autonomous;
8. the idea that the relationship between indicators must be unequivocal and that the fact that different researchers use different indicators for the same concept demonstrates the immaturity of
the social sciences.
I will dedicate a paragraph to a critique of each of these points. Then, I will propose indicators to be selected for some fundamental concepts of the social sciences.
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