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Eric, what you are talking about is qualitative research - you start  
with data, then work toward a hypothesis.  Conversely, you can start  
with a hypothesis, then collect and analyze data to see if your  
suppositions are supported.  There are also mixed methods designs.

I also think your choice of "knowing how our audiences react" is very  
telling - as Charlie mentioned a few threads back, learning is a  
complicated, mushy topic that can be approached from multiple  
directions, through multiple theoretical models.  For instance, even  
as an exhibit developer, you might be interested in learning as a  
function of emotional response, a behavioral, or a cognitive response  
(or something in between).  In other words, you might be interested in  
knowing how they felt after the experience, what they learned, or what  
you taught them (I shudder when I wrote that last one :).

  What strikes me as being the common thread throughout this  
discussion is that learning is both spectral and dimensional - that  
is, we can talk about behavioral learning or social learning - points  
on the spectrum - and then we can talk about the finer aspects at each  
of those points - the dimensional.  So when I see arguments about  
different points of view, I don't view them as dichotomous, but rather  
as connected.  Central to this whole argument is that, by definition,  
evaluation is also spectral and dimensional:  It can be done for  
different reasons, in various ways, and serve multiple purposes.


	



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