Fundamentals of Hard and Soft Measurement

This chapter describes a measurement framework that can be used to analyze the major aspects associated to hard and soft measurements. The framework provides a discipline for planning and executing a measurement and for interpreting experimental outcomes. The application of this framework to the assessment of research quality has evidenced the need for such disciplined reasoning when issues of measurability and metrological model identifiability become evident. This example has highlighted that information producing processes, such as measurement and assessment, usually have different features. Assessment differs from measurement in at least three aspects: uncertainty not explicitly evaluated, reference scale implicitly defined, comparison with standards performed in a subjective, or only partially inter-subjective, way. The usage of the measurement framework eases reasoning about the various steps, both formal and informal, that could be followed to enhance the objectivity and the inter-subjectivity of any v-assignment and of its results.