Generating an Agent Based Model from Interviews and Observations: Procedures and Challenges - Advances in Social Simulation - page 365

but linguistic representations of the interviewees' reflections rather than behavioral
data. Therefore, it proved worthwhile to accompany the interview findings with tech-
niques of observation and document analysis. Nevertheless, the process of data collec-
tion remains selective in the sense that not all involved stakeholders could be
interviewed and not all meetings could be observed due to practicability reasons. It
proved challenging to generate all information desired for the modeling process as
well. From the methods used and data acquired it was not obvious which constella-
tions of stakeholder goals triggered their cooperation. Although some basic mechan-
isms were identified, their situational occurrence varied to a larger extent.
A strong advantage of using the empirical methods used is however, that they are
widely used and easily applicable. More interviews and observation can always be
conducted to add to the information available and enhance the validity of the model.
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