We have to be clear about who makes definitions of variables and measures. I suggested in STAT3507 in 2001 that to write a clear question on a survey about crime, where ambiguity could be an issue in the respondant's understanding the question, that we use the criminal code to develop the wording of our question concerning crime. But this would be to let the legislative branch of government define our questions and thus the responses and understanding by the respondents and then it would effect our variables. Much like the wordings for questions in a survey at school is effected by the school's equity office or a human rights code effects question wording in a government survey when wording questions of sexual orientation or disability.

I understood this perspective of definitions after reading chapter two in Goggin, Gerald & Newell, Christopher, Digital Disability: The Social Construction of Disability in the New Media (Lanham, ML.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). This chapter attempted to show that the deaf commmunity find cochlear implants unethical but the medical community find them ethical and thus culture determines values and ethics related to technology. The deaf do not feel they are less human than the hearing people are. Thus the deaf community has a culture that defines a cochlear implant differently than a medical community. Is disability really a loss or is it becoming a member of another community?

I know that when I accepted myself as insane that meant to me that I was by that fact allowed to become a great artist. I had joined the community of insane people and had not lost anything. Thus Virginia Lafond's book Greiving Mental Illness which suggests we greive properly the loss of our minds suggests that mental illness is a loss and that we must be made whole again. I believed her ten or so years ago. Now I understand how she played into the medical model and, in fact, I should reject her point of view and see again that loosing my mind was gaining an identity in a community and culture.

The authors Goggin, Gerald & Newell, Christopher ask a key question I need to think about at the end of their chapter two. I value a laptop screen highly but what value is it if the communication is not visual? What value does a laptop have to someone who has sight loss?