Rethinking the Applicability of Hermeneutic Systems for Coding and Statistical Analysis of Authorial Intentions in Economics

Abstract

In this paper there is described the use of hermeneutic systems for scientific purposes in economics. Rethinking of hermeneutic systems allowed to transform them into economic information scientific collection methods and enabled to design the quantification procedure for collected qualitative data. The paper also deals with the quantitative coding of authorial intentions, which enables to convert the variables used in the narratives and qualitative research such as interviews into quantitative variables and compare them to the variables used in quantitative research or to make their analysis using the quantitative methods. This methodology is based on the combination of Romanticist, Phenomenological, Dialectical, Critical, and Post-structural hermeneutic systems of interpretation described by Demeterio III. These systems allowed describing the phenomena of knowledge producing which is important in selecting the right hermeneutical coding construct. In this methodology the hermeneutical coding consists of four structural elements: text, interpreter, reality and variables. In order to ensure the repeatability of coding results the special coding sequence was designed. It combines six stages of content processing and coding: reading the text and understanding its overall meaning (based on selection and use of hermeneutic systems), identification of text's logical structure (based on Wilkinson’s Key and Hook technique), dividing the text into logical passages, comparative analysis of the logical passages and their conflation into coherent logical sequence, operationalization of the logical passages (based on operationalization technique of Merkys and Six unit coding sequence given by Weber), and dichotomous coding (based on Whicker & Lynn dichotomous coding).

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ee.24.5.4705