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Record W2006730206 · doi:10.1177/00113921030515006

When Methods Make a Difference

2003· article· en· W2006730206 on OpenAlexaff
Blair Wheaton

Bibliographic record

VenueCurrent Sociology · 2003
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicUrban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Toronto
Fundersnot available
KeywordsInterdependenceContext (archaeology)Range (aeronautics)Set (abstract data type)Computer scienceEpistemologySociologyLimitingCover (algebra)Data scienceManagement scienceSocial scienceEconomics

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

The fundamental point of this article is that methods change what we are able to see. Using a series of examples, the article suggests that substantive literatures are regularly set off course by the limitations built into widely used methodological frameworks to analyse data. In each example, simpler and/or better known methods are compared to methods which either incorporate a broader range of possible influences or clarify the issue at hand, and consequently essential findings change. These findings suggest either that the inertial state of findings in research literatures could be redefined or redirected by the application of methods which take into account more clearly the effects of time and place, or that given theories may be transformed by methods which resolve conflicting or limiting features of theoretical debate. Examples cover a wide range of issues, from longitudinal vs cross-sectional data, to the specification of models to replace equations, to the influence of social context on individual behaviour, to the importance of time in the modelling of events, to the nuances of capturing the complexity behind interdependent processes over the life course.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.341
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.633
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMetaresearch
Consensus categoriesMetaresearch
DomainCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.659
Threshold uncertainty score0.813

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.3410.633
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0020.002
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0040.003
Bibliometrics0.0060.005
Science and technology studies0.0060.046
Scholarly communication0.0310.048
Open science0.0070.018
Research integrity0.0180.024
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0220.014

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.146
GPT teacher head0.450
Teacher spread0.305 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; the direct Gemma label and the distilled Codex classifier agree on what is shown here.

Study designTheoretical or conceptual
DomainMethods
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations6
Published2003
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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