In Social Sciences (in General), Psychology and Psychiatry
In social sciences in general, psychology and psychiatry included, data about differences between individuals, like any data, can be collected and measured using different levels of measurement. Those levels include dichotomous (a person either has a personality trait or not) and non-dichotomous approaches. While the non-dichotomous approach allows for understanding that everyone lies somewhere on a particular personality dimension, the dichotomous (nominal categorical and ordinal) approaches only seek to confirm that a particular person either has or does not have a particular mental disorder.
Expert witnesses particularly are trained to help courts in translating the data into the legal (e.g. 'guilty' vs. 'innocent') dichotomy, which apply to law, sociology and ethics.
Read more about this topic: Continuum (theory)
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