Janet McDonnell

Recognizing rhetoric in health care policy analysis

Critiques of the ‘naïve rationalist’ model of policy-making abound in the sociological and political science literature. Yet academic debate on health care policy-making continues to be couched in the dominant discourse of evidence-based medicine, whose underlying assumptions - that policies are driven by facts rather than values and these can be clearly separated; that ‘evidence’ is context-free, can be objectively weighed up and placed unproblematically in a ‘hierarchy’; and that policy-making is essentially an exercise in decision science - have constrained both thinking and practice. In this paper, drawing on theoretical work from political science and philosophy, and innovative empirical work in the health care sector, we argue that health care is well overdue for a re-defining of what policy-making is. Policy-making is the formal struggle over ideas and values, played out by the rhetorical use of language and the enactment of social situations. While the selection, evaluation and implementation of research evidence are important in the policy-making process, they do not equate to that process. The study of argument in the construction of policy has the potential to illuminate dimensions of the process that are systematically occluded when policy-making is studied through a naïve rationalist lens. In particular, a rhetorical perspective highlights the struggle over ideas, the ‘naming and framing’ of policy problems, the centrality of audience and the rhetorical use of language in discussion to increase the audiences adherence to particular framings and proposals. Rhetorical theory requires us to redefine what counts as ‘rationality’ - which must extend from what is provably true (by logic) and probably true (by Bayesian reasoning) to embrace, in addition, that which is plausibly true (i.e. can convince a reasonable audience). Future research into health care policy-making needs to move beyond the study of ‘getting evidence into practice’ and address the language, arguments and discourse through which policy is constructed and enacted.

Descriptive models for interpreting design

Abstract An interpretivist perspective on the study of design makes demands of methods and representational formalisms which are different from those valued from an analytical perspective. Ways of studying and describing design are presented which are consistent with the view that the process by which we come to understand design as a social activity is, in essence, a work of interpretation. A unifying methodological basis for studying and describing design is proposed. Using examples from a case study, two complementary forms of description are presented. The interpretation they represent respects the inseparability of conceiving and evaluating possible design solutions, the process of designing, and the justification of design proposals.

Knowledge-based systems in context: a methodological approach to the qualitative issues

Knowledge-Based Systems (KBS) are developed to contain substantial elements of human knowledge and expertise in a well-defined domain, and use these to support user or expert tasks. Issues related to the social and organisational contexts of these systems are widely acknowledged to be particularly critical to their success. However, methodology proposals usually stop short of adequately handling soft and unstructured data that frame the contexts of use. The handling of qualitative data needs to be done in a way that directly impinges on the wider Knowledge-Based System engineering processes and decisions. In this paper, we discuss the nature of context-sensitive issues, and describe a methodological approach for resolving them through the rigorous analysis of qualitative data, using a methodology which is based upon the Grounded Theory method from the social sciences.

Visualising document content with metadata to facilitate goal-directed search

Much corporate knowledge is captured in documents. This paper describes the design and evaluation of an application, named Gridvis, which uses metadata to enable rapid goal-directed searches within corporate documents. Gridvis visualises metadata that describes and differentiates the contents of individual paragraphs. This visualisation is used as the basis for rapid querying and navigation. An experimental evaluation of Gridviss performance on representative work tasks is described. Qualitative analysis of the data suggests that there is substantial room for performance improvement, and has inspired design changes to realise this potential. Quantitative analysis proved inadequate to detect a numerical advantage due to the sample size restrictions inherent when doing academic research in a corporate setting. The problems of empirical evaluation in a corporate setting are discussed. An alternative approach to reliable evaluation is proposed.

Evolving spatial representations to support innovation and the communication of strategic knowledge

Abstract Computer-based representations of strategic knowledge in the form of maps can be used by specialists from different fields to maintain the coherence of their work, whilst at the same time providing scope for individual creativity. In collaboration with manufacturing organisations, we are evolving tools and techniques to facilitate the elicitation and mapping of their strategic knowledge. The tools that we are developing can be used to communicate this knowledge across distributed teams of engineers, designers, and brand managers. The tools integrate and maintain the coherence of activity among these groups, and also facilitate the apprehension of new knowledge. We describe how this can be achieved using a mixture of spatial hypertext and reconfigurable information spaces. These tools provide scope for gradually building context, while simultaneously enabling exploration of detailed knowledge.

An Empirical Evaluation of the Interactive Visualization of Metadata to Support Document Use

Digital Libraries currently focus on delivering documents. Since information needs are often satisfied at the sub-document level, digital libraries should explore ways to support document use as well as retrieval. This paper describes the design and initial evaluation of a technology being developed for document use. It uses interactive visualization of paragraph level metadata to allow rapid goal-directed search and navigation within documents. An experimental evaluation of a prototypes performance on representative work tasks is described. Quantitative analysis finds that the prototype does not increase performance. However, qualitative analysis of the data suggests that there is room for performance improvements and has inspired design changes to realize this potential.

Sharing metadata - problems and potential solutions

We investigate the level of agreement in applying metadata and highlights results from the analysis of agreement between and within user communities. Problems in applying and sharing metadata are diagnosed by examining the reliability of metadata application by domain experts, especially when contrasted to researchers. Three main problems are discussed: issues pertaining to data, the metadata and the application process. Strategies are proposed to resolve these issues. Our research highlights the need for diagnostic tools that identify the sources of poor agreement and therefore guide steps to improve metadata application and sharing.

Interactive Visualization of Paragraph-level Metadata to Support Corporate Document Use

In recent years a huge research effort has been devoted to making information on the Web more accessible. One strand concentrates on semantics (the meaning of data); within this is work on data description (via metadata) and research to develop tools for presenting and accessing information through metadata visualisation. The book where this chapter appears is a collection exploring the emerging field bringing research on information visualisation together with research towards realising the ‘semantic web’ (Berners-Lee, 1998-1999). This invited chapter concerns how the visualisation of metadata at paragraph level can support goal-directed searches within documents. It describes a novel approach to document visualisation, claims are supported through an account of how a functional taxonomy of paragraph-level tags (semantic metadata) can be generated via systematic empirical methods. An interactive tool for document visualisation (GridVis), developed by Weiss-Lijn, which realises the proposals is described; there is extensive discussion of user testing and formal, quantitative evaluation of system performance and how findings from these sources provided the rationale for the novel features of the visualisation tool. The chapter sets GridVis in the context of related pioneering attempts to visualise other document properties and to support goal-directed navigation within documents. The research reported contributes to the agenda for realising the semantic web, although it can apply to any electronic documents. The work was initially motivated by the needs of large organisations to better exploit information ‘stored’ in documents. The empirical aspects of the work were made possible through collaboration and sponsorship from JSainsbury plc; the principal funding was via a postgraduate training partnership award from the DTI and EPSRC. Early developments for this work were widely disseminated as was a method for testing based on theoretical ‘best case’ performance devised to support this work but widely applicable to information visualisation tools.

Cambridge Handbook of Engineering Education Research: Engineering Design Education

Introduction Designing is a key component of professional practice in many fields of human endeavor (e.g., architecture, engineering, industrial design, art, and literature). For engineers, designing integrates engineering knowledge, skill, and vision in the pursuit of innovations to solve problems and enable modern life. With this understanding, engineering educators have, for several decades, been infusing their programs with design curricula and pedagogical experiences in order to enhance the design competencies of engineering graduates. Paralleling the development of these curricula and experiences, a growing body of research has been providing a scholarly basis for engineering design education. The goal of this chapter is to acquaint readers with engineering design education research and practice. To situate engineering design education in the larger context, we first present a brief history of research on design processes across several fields and then move to a more specific description of research on engineering design processes. We then focus on research that investigates effective ways to teach and assess the design process and review curricular structures and pedagogies that are commonly used in undergraduate engineering programs.

An Investigation into Sharing Metadata: "I'm not thinking what you are thinking"

A small collection of metadata concepts has been jointly negotiated among a group of specialists to be relevant for classifying data used in their field. A series of comparisons are made to test levels of agreement between individuals when these concepts are used to tag data items. Inter-coder agreement measures are presented for a range of data sets and individuals with varying relationships to the data sets. The implications of the results for the use of metadata as a supporting mechanism for knowledge sharing are discussed.