Two supporting technologies for qualitative meta-synthesis
Tang Xi-jin · Systems Engineering - Theory & Practice · 2010
With the popularity of complex sciences and more occurrence of wicked problems in reality, the meta-synthesis system approach(MSA) proposed by Professor Qian Xuesen and his colleagues gained more attention.Both the impetus from the innovative IT developments and the urgent requirements from the reality drive the research and demonstrations of HWMSE.Despite system integration and its platform highlighted in the engineering practice,this paper focuses on some fundamental problems of applying MSA to complex issues,such as how to supportconfident hypothesizingwhich then leads to rigorous validating.Two supporting technologies for qualitative meta-synthesis,CorMap and iView, are addressed together with 5 typical applications.Toward the thinking behavior records represented by the textual data,both technologies conduct a series of computing to achieve the exploratory structures of the emerging ideas under different perspectives,and help interactive analysis and imaginary thinking. Comments on text mining,ontology regarding to CorMap/iView are given.