BEHAVORIAL METHODS / WORKING PAPER

Both the history and relationship description of variables between measures leads us to think that moving from hard to soft is too simplistic. The author suggests that the hard and soft measures will be continued to bleed together in new synthesis.

We suggest the following. A man commits suicide. The day before, he was fired from his job. He sits before a camera that is activated and indicates on note the time of day and why he commits suicide. With camera still running, he puts a gun in his mouth and shoots himself. He is dead. The SOFT variables include the shooting, the note, the camera recording, and his dead body. The suicide is the hard variable.

The soft variable means that one investigates if he did get fired from his job. That he had indicated to others depression and that no one thought that he was serious or that he established the scene for the note and camera recording.

One author indicates that the more work he does in his field, the more likely he will be working with others who are in hard/soft or related intermixtures. Social geography blurs into social psychology and then urban sociology.

The shooting will be added to other suicides and other variables both hard and soft and the intermixtures may find new explanations for the suicide. No one else at work that may have been fired killed themselves or others. Three others were fired and they did not kill themselves or want to kill themselves.