Journal of the Society of Humanities - Sapporo Gakuin University, No.83,61-100, 2008

Relatedness Evaluation Qualitative Analysis for Transcript Study- Its basic ideas and practice
(in Japanese)

ABSTRACT
A new qualitative research approach - Relatedness Evaluation Qualitative Analysis - for transcript study was offered with theoretical considerations and practical techniques. The KH Method (Kanrensei Hyoutei; Relatedness Evaluation), utilizes and combines three distinct techniques originated or developed by Japanese researchers such as 1)KJ Method by Jiro Kawakita, anthropologist, for constructing a summarized label structure of transcript contents, 2)Quantification Theory by Chikio Hayashi to find a multi dimensional scaling from a correspondent table of summarized labels obtained by KJ Method, and 3) Formal Concept Analysis programmed by Hiroyasu Nagata to yield a Hasse diagram to show the structure of the labels.
The characteristic points of KH Method in comparison with Grounded Theory Analysis (GTA) and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) are as follows: 1) KH Method arranged KJ Method and enabled both numerical and logical structural analyses for more valid interpretational process of transcript. 2) When external criterion variables of each speaker for each transcript are obtained, KH Method integrates quantitative and qualitative approach by enabling categorical multi regression analysis or categorical discriminant analysis by using Hayashi's Quantification Theory Analysis (type I or II). 3) KH Method separates a transcript basically into sentences, which are written on separated cards for card-group making in terms of relatedness of their contents. Autopoietic nature of the card-group formation and its labeling process with less abstractive labels are different from GTA/IPA's rather abstractive way of coding. 4)KH Method takes account of plurality/singularity of respondent/transcript/researcher and prepares four types of research format to integrate plural results.
Discussions were made about autopoietic process of KJ and KH Method and its cultural aspects in terms of linguistic relativity, also about significance of labeling process using synecdoche, a figurative expression between class and member.

Keywords: qualitative analysis, transcript, relatedness, quantification theory, formal concept analysis, autopoietic, KJ Method, grounded theory, interpretative phenomenological analysis, synecdoche, interpretative model (40 pages)

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Journal of the Society of Humanities - Sapporo Gakuin University, No.79, 45-78,2006

Application Limits of Statistical Significance Test in Psychological Studies (in Japanese)

ABSTRACT
In the process of confirming the interpretative and qualitative approach in psychology, it turned out that the statistical metrical approach needed a thorough re-examination because it has been questioned for years about its validity and applicability to social sciences. Although metrical psychological researches and studies have been published in professional journals only when they succeeded in rejecting the null hypothesis on the significance level of 5% or 1%, the conventional statistical way of this test was criticized technically, methodologically, and epistemologically by a classical book titled “The significance test controversy”(1970). However, no improvements have been made about its misuse, misinterpretation, and meaningless abuse until now as described in “The insignificance of statistical significance testing”(1999). The present paper looked into two basic statistical issues, 1) how to set the significance level, 2) what kind of the statistical population to be supposed from which samples are drawn, and found that "the sacred level of significance, 5% or 1%" should be modified according to the purpose of each study, and that the population should be differentiated and defined strictly in order to avoid the implicit supposition of "uniformity of man". The history of psychology was viewed as a movement toward the general understanding of human nature by neglecting its personal, social, cultural and historical multiplicity and also toward a so-called scientific discipline such as the psychology of perception and behavioral sciences by employing the statistical significance test. However, since the technical requests for the clear definition of the attributes of a) sampled subjects and b) its population are not easily satisfied as General Semantics indicates, it was pointed out that the interpretation of significance test results does not necessarily yield a generalized conclusion for a "hard" science. Discussion was made about the phenomenon of “non-description” about statistically fundamental problems in statistics-oriented psychological papers.

Keywords: interpretative and qualitative psychology, metrical psychology, statistical test, significance level, population, sampling, uniformity of man, General Semantics, non-description (34 pages)

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Journal of the Society of Humanities - Sapporo Gakuin University," N0.78,1-26, 2005

Some Theoretical Grounds for Interpretative Psychological Studies and a Model-Making Method Based on Abduction (in Japanese)

ABSTRACT With the cautious attitude of General Semantics, some of the basic points of the metrical approach were critically overviewed and it was shown that induction and deduction are unrealistic logical requirements as seen in J.S.Mill's axiom called "uniformity of nature", and that plurality or repetitiveness of phenomena are not always postulated in psychology because people are not "uniform". An interpretative psychological approach was introduced with such basic concepts as 1） the presumed factuality of verbal texts, 2） the logical inference based on abduction that C.S. Peirce proposed, and 3） synecdochical understanding/generalization of interpretatively derived models. The abduction based model making of causality yields an idiographic model about each interviewee's behavior and cognition, and each model can be "generalized" synecdochically as in the clinical psychological case study and in the pathographical case study. A topic in a qualitative study - why people tell about the weather on the verge of death - was discussed in terms of collateral models and their synecdochically abstracted higher model.

Keywords: qualitative psychology, interpretative approach, factuality, abduction, figurative understanding, synecdoche, General Semantics, collateral model (26 pages)

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