Talk:Observational techniques

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May I suggest that Observational techniques be renamed Observational techniques in marketing or Observational techniques (Marketing)? The term is used in other social sciences as well as the physical sciences. The same goes for the title of the article Experimental techniques. Most of the article is specific to marketing, and if the same amount were added concerning each the other fields that use the term, the article would end up very, very long indeed. GUllman 20:56 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

You can rename it if you want. Actually, the way I wrote the article was to make the first two thirds very general. It applies to all the social sciences. In fact that part is more applicable to psychology, sociology, social anthropology, and ethnology, than it is to marketing. Only the last third, entitled "In Marketing research" is marketing specific. If you change the title, don't forget to change links on the pages that link to it.

The reason I didn't call it observational techniques (in the social sciences and marketing) is from what I can see about the way Wiki works, general titles are used on a first come, first serve basis. For example, when I did the article on Product, I had to call it product (business) because the general product category was already used by mathematics. I have found similar situations with positioning, distribution, and several other articles I have written. mydogategodshat 02:51 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I often do specify an article's discipline, but only when I have writen the article only with that discipline in mind : For example, logit analysis (in marketing) and multi dimensional scaling (in marketing). In cases like these, they would be of little value to anyone other than marketers. Mathematicians would find them lacking in pure theory, and social scienticts would find some of the procedures quite different from what they are familiar with. mydogategodshat 01:03 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)