Making Assessment

Qualitative data deals with idea, concept, and meaning. Our assessment of qualitative data is likely to reflect the interests we bring to it and the use we want to make of it. Hence, measuring our accounts of events, knowledge and meaning against presumed initial state. İn so doing we bring realibility and validity in rank order, whilst making distinctions based on variations that is in focus on the time of evaluation, for better or worse.

Categorizing the data allows us to make comparisons more effectively and hence locate the kind of information we should be looking for. Classifying the data therefore, lays the basis for making new connections between different bits of data. Categorisation is a conceptual process that involves idea and requires considerable amount of thought.




Raging Memories
A reader, who wishes to remain anonymous, wonders why natives in East Africa falsely remember that long ago rivers were raging torrents all year round, compared to seasonal trickles now:

Participatory research in East African catchments uncovers memories of catchment hydrology at odds with the hydrological record. Community elders paint a picture of drying and increasingly seasonal rivers; gone are the raging torrents of their youth, replaced by trickles which flow only in the rainy season. However, hydrological records from colonial and the post-independence era suggest that these memories are something of a fiction. In certain catchments, river flow has actually increased over time.

I wonder if you might be able to explain this apparent bias. It may be that participatory research methodologies are to blame - eliciting false information. However, conversation with colleagues indicates that this discrepancy between memory and the record may be a global phenomenon. Additionally, I have noticed that the conclusions of scientist colleagues appear to be influenced by community perceptions of a changing hydrology.

If there is a bias at work, do you think this may have consequences for our understanding of climate change? Do false childhood memories influence the popular view that the weather is changing?

Source: Adam Smith Blog
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/07/raging-memories.html