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CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Quantitative Psychology and Measurement
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1569344
Can You See the Ripples Spreading? The Role of Context Dependency and Language in the Measurement of Complex Phenomena like Writing
Provisionally accepted
Ursula Canton1*
Daniela Zahn2- 1Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, United Kingdom
- 2independent scholar, Torino, Italy
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This paper addresses the challenges of measuring complex, socially constructed, context-dependent phenomena, using writing assessment as an example. The wider literature in the social sciences, specifically in psychology and often relating to measurement, identifies a disconnection between real-world observations and scientific measurement of social phenomena. Drawing on interdisciplinary research, the paper considers the factors of context-dependency, conceptual ambiguity and the role of language both in the manifestation of these phenomena and as a tool for research. To address the resulting challenges, the application of the consensual assessment technique (CAT) as a context-sensitive measurement to assess writing quality is presented. Findings from three empirical studies demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of this method for writing quality and, potentially, beyond. The paper thus contributes to addressing theoretical and methodological challenges in social science research, offering a new way to study complex, socially constructed, context-dependent phenomena beyond the constraints of traditional experimental designs.
Keywords: Philosophy of science, methodology, context, Language, Writing
Received: 10 Feb 2025; Accepted: 14 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Canton and Zahn. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ursula Canton, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, United Kingdom
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