Problems and prospects of measurement in the study of culture

• Published in: Theory and society Vol. 43; no. 3/4; pp. 225 - 246
• Main Authors: Mohr, John W., Ghaziani, Amin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer 01.07.2014; Springer Netherlands; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Academic conferences; Careers; Clerics; Cultural studies; Culture; Dilemmas; Humor; Intellectuals; Jokes; Lazarsfeld, Paul Felix; Measurement; Philosophers; Philosophy of science; Philosophy of the Social Sciences; Physics; Psychologists; Psychometrics; Qualitative analysis; Qualitative Methods; Quantitative analysis; Quantitative Methods; Research methods; Scholarship; Social research; Social Sciences; Social theories; Sociologists; Sociology; Sociology of Culture; Measurement; S.S. Stevens; Qualitative and quantitative methods; Paul Lazarsfeld; Ernst Cassirer; Philosophy of science; Culture
• ISSN: 0304-2421; 1573-7853
• DOI: 10.1007/s11186-014-9227-2

What is the role of measurement in the sociology of culture and how can we sort out the complexities that distinguish qualitative from quantitative approaches to this domain? In this article, we compare the issues and concerns of contemporary scholars who work on matters of culture with the writings of a group of scholars who had prepared papers for a special symposium on scientific measurement held at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) back in 1956. We focus on three issues—the recurring need to reinvent measurement (as illustrated by the career of the psychologist S.S. Stevens), the linkage between qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis (as articulated in the writings of the sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld), and the assertion (by philosophers Ernst Cassirer and Peter Caws) that theorizing necessarily precedes measuring. We review a number of important advances in the way that measurement is theorized and implemented in the sociology of culture and we also point to a number of enduring dilemmas and conundrums that continue to occupy researchers in the field today.