I always shock my students a bit when I tell them that quantitative data is just qualitative data that has already been interpreted numerically. - ThreadSky

jessicacalarco.bsky.social • 8 hours ago

I always shock my students a bit when I tell them that quantitative data is just qualitative data that has already been interpreted numerically.

Reposted from Jess Calarco

In case you need a teaching example of the social construction of quantitative data...
www.nytimes.com/2025/02/21/u...

Comments

davenewb.bsky.social•6 hours ago

That's certainly the case with financial statements. The numbers only show what happened, not why or how.

isilven.bsky.social•8 hours ago

>.> to be honest part of it is that we're usually required to take Research Stats as a prereq, and so we get into this mindset of "qualitative MUST equal words and quantitative MUST equal numbers and they CANNOT intersect or interact", which gets totally shaken apart in Research Methods.

maddavenport.bsky.social•7 hours ago

Oh, I love this.

caseykulla.bsky.social•5 hours ago

Printing this and handing to the 15 yr old.

diygeochemist.bsky.social•8 hours ago

Wow!! That's deep.

I should add it to the list of discussions I already have with my lab students: "Yes, qualitative observations are also super important" & "Are you really measuring what you think you're measuring?" & "Self-reflection after you do an experiment will make you a better scientist."

sciencedawn.bsky.social•5 hours ago

📌

katiecannon.bsky.social•7 hours ago

*Public* Ledger

Government so called “debt” = Private net savings

katiecannon.bsky.social•6 hours ago

Public “debt” = Public Net Savings

mkott.bsky.social•5 hours ago

Love this take on it!

josephenderson.bsky.social•8 hours ago

Right! I've moved from a foundation in qual to more recent work in quant and I'm really glad I had this trajectory. Makes you realize how much quant data relies on a whole set of social and cultural decisions/assumptions. The best quant scholars realize this.

sunderedmarches.com•8 hours ago

that is... an incredibly efficient way to teach that issue, holy shit, I wish someone had said this to me when I was in college.

pt007.bsky.social•7 hours ago

🏆

cmteague.bsky.social•5 hours ago

This has me thinking about student evaluations of teaching, and the uses and usefulness of the quant and qual sections of SETs. For both individual faculty members and review committees.

jessicacalarco.bsky.social•8 hours ago

This is, in my view, one of the risks of relying on secondary data. Students who participate in data collection (quant or qual) see that data are socially constructed and that careful interpretation is required. For those who only use pre-made data/codebooks, those are harder conclusions to draw.

jessicacalarco.bsky.social•7 hours ago

Take data on height. It might seem like straightforward quant data. But how was it collected? Self-report or researcher-measured? Inches or centimeters? Rounded? Morning or evening? Did the person slouch or stand up straight? There is no one accurate number. Just a number produced by choices made.

jessicacalarco.bsky.social•7 hours ago

You could argue--the accurate number is height first thing in the morning, standing up straight, measured by someone else to the millimeter. But how many of us stand that way all the time? There's an equally valid case to be made for measuring height when we're slouching--the way we're usually seen.

themadtinker.bsky.social•5 hours ago

I can even atest to this! Even large buildings wake up diffrent heights every day.
I won't label the data besides "vague building tilt and settlement", but tlder, they are bouncing around lol. You really think your body is as stable as 18 stories of concrete? Nope. 🤣

themadtinker.bsky.social•6 hours ago

-laughs manically in QA-

jessicacalarco.bsky.social•7 hours ago

Those choices also have implications. For example, the fact that we generally measure height at its absolute maximum likely leads people to overstate when they're asked to self-report. Because it puts a higher social value on higher heights.

sethpartnow.bsky.social•6 hours ago

Even pretty enlightened people have a hard time grasping the degree to which data is/are constructed. What is recorded, and how, reflects assumptions (either explicit or implicit) about what matters, which in turn propagates through the entire analysis. Which is why “objective data analysis” is BS.

maestraoogway.bsky.social•6 hours ago

📌

scenarist.bsky.social•7 hours ago

If they persist with the reverse of your wise instruction, they should, at the very least, reckon with Leibniz’s notion that every change in quantity is a change in quality.

thalkowski.bsky.social•6 hours ago

Every piece of quantitative data rests on a qualitative 'moment' where an observation was categorized, then counted.

pittprofdude.bsky.social•1 hour ago

Most important thing I learned in grad school!

eastsidegadfly.bsky.social•5 hours ago

Also the decision of what should be observed at all

thalkowski.bsky.social•5 hours ago

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."

jessicacalarco.bsky.social•6 hours ago

Exactly.

emily.gorcen.ski•4 hours ago

Every data point is a reflection that a human somewhere made a decision that something should be measured and it was important to do so, and that in itself, is data

scellisblackwell.bsky.social•6 hours ago

📌

bextraordinary.bsky.social•4 hours ago

When I wanted to leave academia, I was worried I wouldn't find a use for my qual skillset because I had bought the idea that quant is more valuable. Actually, the demand for qual skills in applied spaces is HIGH! Soooo much of what we do in evaluation & technical assistance spaces requires qual 💪

janetlinde.bsky.social•28 minutes ago

Quant without qual is what I call "plenty of G2 but no gee whiz!"

sfero.bsky.social•3 hours ago

Love it! Also, EVERY field of science started as a qualitative observation.

joshuafoust.com•8 hours ago

Omg I do this too! I love watching the reactions.

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