| Abstract: | Past students of heuristic types such as the ideal or constructed types have often proposed that empirical cases be studied by comparison with the heuristic type. However, they have provided no specific guidelines for such comparison, and critics have deemed the operation unfruitful. Such guidelines are provided here, based on the monothetic-polythetic distinction. Each empirical case is initially assigned to a monothetic type, then later a decision can be made about whether to collapse to polytheticism. Both general and specific guidelines for delimiting types are provided. A distinction is made between theoretical and mechanical methods of type construction, and examples are provided. Methods of choosing variables for a typology are also discussed. |
