Empirical methods in business location research

This research aims to examine the relationship between business location decision and business success. The case is Internet café business in Indonesia. This research is addressed to answer these main questions: (1) what factors do underlie location decision for an Internet café business?; and (2) does location decision determine success of Internet café business? A field research is conducted to answer these questions.Factor analysis applied to 17 location factors reveals five underlying dimensions of business location decision. They are centrality, business environment, business venue, cost, and labor. Based on responses from 93 Internet cafés in three locations (i.e. Yogyakarta, Surabaya, and Lombok), the author finds that favorable location of business is positively related to business success. More specifically, a regression analysis reveals that availability of utilities, proximity to schools/universities and security affect business success in a positive direction, while proximity to highways, being in commercial center affect in a negative direction. The independent variables explain 23 percent of total variance.

Download Full-text

What is—or, for that Matter, isn’t—‘Experimental’ Semantics?

10.1093/oso/9780198739548.003.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Pauline Jacobson

Keyword(s):

Natural Language ◽

Large Scale ◽

Empirical Work ◽

Thought Experiments ◽

Natural Language Semantics ◽

Empirical Methods ◽

Language Semantics ◽

Experimental Semantics

This chapter examines the currently fashionable notion of ‘experimental semantics’, and argues that most work in natural language semantics has always been experimental. The oft-cited dichotomy between ‘theoretical’ (or ‘armchair’) and ‘experimental’ is bogus and should be dropped form the discourse. The same holds for dichotomies like ‘intuition-based’ (or ‘thought experiments’) vs. ‘empirical’ work (and ‘real experiments’). The so-called new ‘empirical’ methods are often nothing more than collecting the large-scale ‘intuitions’ or, doing multiple thought experiments. Of course the use of multiple subjects could well allow for a better experiment than the more traditional single or few subject methodologies. But whether or not this is the case depends entirely on the question at hand. In fact, the chapter considers several multiple-subject studies and shows that the particular methodology in those cases does not necessarily provide important insights, and the chapter argues that some its claimed benefits are incorrect.

Download Full-text

Assessing Medical Evidence

10.1093/oso/9780198747048.003.0007 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Jacob Stegenga

Keyword(s):

Quality Assessment ◽

Randomized Trials ◽

Empirical Studies ◽

Allocation Concealment ◽

Assessment Tools ◽

Medical Evidence ◽

Empirical Methods ◽

First Order ◽

First Order Methods

Medical scientists employ ‘quality assessment tools’ to assess evidence from medical research, especially from randomized trials. These tools are designed to take into account methodological details of studies, including randomization, subject allocation concealment, and other features of studies deemed relevant to minimizing bias. There are dozens of such tools available. They differ widely from each other, and empirical studies show that they have low inter-rater reliability and low inter-tool reliability. This is an instance of a more general problem called here the underdetermination of evidential significance. Disagreements about the quality of evidence can be due to different—but in principle equally good—weightings of the methodological features that constitute quality assessment tools. Thus, the malleability of empirical research in medicine is deep: in addition to the malleability of first-order empirical methods, such as randomized trials, there is malleability in the tools used to evaluate first-order methods.

Download Full-text

The Duty of Philosophy

10.1093/oso/9780198810384.003.0002 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Donald C. Williams

Keyword(s):

Empirical Methods ◽

General Terms ◽

The World

This chapter concerns the nature of metaphysics and a defense of it through a clarification of what role it plays in our theorizing of the world. It is argued that metaphysics and science are on the same continuum and that therefore the same empirical methods apply to metaphysics and the sciences. The ontology/cosmology distinction and the analytic/speculative distinction are introduced and explained. Ontology is the study of being as such and is concerned with general features of every existent, whereas cosmology is the study of how every existent is related to every other in general terms. Analytic inquiry concerns the nature of something and is therefore deductive, whereas speculative inquiry concerns why certain things come into being and is therefore inductive. Both distinctions are distinct. The resulting proposal is that metaphysics has two branches: ontology and cosmology, and either branch can be investigated analytically or speculatively.

Download Full-text