For various reasons, I have stopped working on this blog for several monthes but not thinking on methodology and epistemology. You can join me on this blog.

La discussion publique que permet Internet me semble utile à l’élaboration d’un tel ouvrage. A mes yeux, il ne s’agit pas de réfléchir dans son coin puis de “publier”, mais de formuler des critiques et des propositions déjà été éprouvées par une discussion informelle au sein d’une communauté de personnes qui, à un moment ou à un autre, se trouvent concernées. Je souhaite donner une légitimité tant aux affirmations (par principe contestables) qu’aux questions (par principe plus ou moins bien formulées).

Vous pouvez contribuer à la discussion en proposant des commentaires aux différents “billets” que je vais publier (à commencer par celui-ci). J’assume le rôle de modérateur, c’est-à-dire que je décide de les publier ou de ne pas les publier. (Je ne sais pas exactement ce qui pourrait m’empêcher de publier un commentaire.)

The questionnaire item “J’adore élaborer de nouvelles façons de faire les choses” (Love to think up new ways of doing things) from the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP, Goldberg et al., 2006) was used along with a 5-point Likert scale from “Very Inaccurate” (coded 1) to “Very Accurate” (coded 5). Thus, the descriptive variable X: Ω₁₀₈ -> M(X), where M(X) = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}² = {(1, 1), (1, 2), …, (5, 5)}.

Values of the subset {(5, 1), (5, 2), (5, 3)} describe no respondents although 30 respondents chosen the value 5 at the test.

An interpretation is that respondents who chosen the value 5 at the test remembered an example of being engaged in thinking up new ways of doing something with positive feelings (event M), and that when one is able to remember such an experience (test event M∧5), one is able to retrieve a similar memory at the retest, which precludes the judgements “Very Inaccurate”, “Inaccurate”, or “Neutral” (retest event M∧(4∨5)).

For that interpretation to be an explanation, it has to have a falsifier. The test-retest event (M∧5)∧¬[M∧(4∨5)] is a falsifier.

Reference

Goldberg, L. R., Johnson, J. A., Eber, H. W., Hogan, R., Ashton, M. C., Cloninger, C. R., & Gough, H. C. (2006). The International Personality Item Pool and the future of public-domain personality measures. Journal of Personality Research, 40, 84-96.

The questionnaire item “J’aime résoudre des problèmes complexes” (Like to solve complex problems) from the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP, Goldberg et al., 2006) was used along with a 5-point Likert scale from “Very Inaccurate” (coded 1) to “Very Accurate” (coded 5). Thus, the descriptive variable X: Ω₁₀₈ -> M(X), where M(X) = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}² = {(1, 1), (1, 2), …, (5, 5)}.

Values of the subset {(5, 1), (5, 2), (5, 3)} describe no respondents although 12 respondents chosen the value 5 at the test.

An interpretation is that respondents who chosen the value 5 at the test remembered an example of being engaged in complex problem solving with positive feelings and that when one is able to remember such an experience (test event M∧5), one is able to retrieve a similar memory at the retest, which precludes the judgements “Very Inaccurate”, “Inaccurate”, or “Neutral” (retest event M∧(4∨5)).

For that interpretation to be an explanation, it has to have a falsifier. The test-retest event (M∧5)∧¬[M∧(4∨5)] is a falsifier.

Reference

Goldberg, L. R., Johnson, J. A., Eber, H. W., Hogan, R., Ashton, M. C., Cloninger, C. R., & Gough, H. C. (2006). The International Personality Item Pool and the future of public-domain personality measures. Journal of Personality Research, 40, 84-96.

A descriptive variable can be noted X: Ω -> M(X), where Ω and M(X) denote the set of beings to be described, and the set of possible descriptive values, respectively.

Remark: if the set Ω is unknown, the statement “there exists a non-empty subset of M(X) such that no element of Ω takes a value in it” should not be called a fact but a conjecture.