Diana McLain Smith [Archive.org URL]

Much quantitative data—what we now think of as hard, concrete facts—are really quite soft and abstract.

Think about it. We come up with a question—say, how’s morale? We create abstract categories related to that question, categories like trust, confidence, or autonomy; we use these categories to formulate statements in some kind of survey; we give the survey to lots of people; we ask them to respond to our statements according to some scale; and we count their answers. In the end, we have what we believe to be facts about the degree to which some number of people do or do not trust their boss, have confidence in the leadership, or exercise autonomy. What we actually have is what people say they think, feel, or do in response to our categories—not what they actually think, feel, or do—or the categories they use to think, feel, or do it.

In some instances, this doesn’t much matter. But when it comes to relationships, this is a BIG problem. First, as we all know, what we say and do often diverges. And second, our categories often say more about how we think, not how someone else thinks.

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