Abstract Understanding of the significance of the distinction between the definition and measurement of income may be improved by an awareness of the structure of the process by means of which one moves from the abstract region of theoretical constructs to the reality associated with operational definitions. Once this structure is perceived, alternative empirical pro positions which are considered relevant to the income concept-specificially those found in the technical literature of accounting and economics-may be attached to this skeletal framework for purposes of experimentation and evaluation. In this manner, one would expect important empirical issues to be more clearly identified, and direction thereafter to be given to research aimed at explicating the apparent consequences and relative weights of these issues. Not unexpectedly, problems beset this rather unique approach to the analysis of income metatheory at both stages. In the absence of rigorous quantitative expressions of initial, intermediate, and final states of reasoning by the individual theoretician or practitioner, the structure of this theory cannot be directly induced from explicit formulations. Perforce this leads us back one step to the formulator himself-about whom current research into the nature and simulation of human thought processes has provided some interesting insights and hypotheses for our problem. With the additional aid of several observations concerning research methodology, measurement processes, and purposive behavior, a tentative structure was outlined. In the second stage of our overall approach, the principal problem is one of dimension. Even delimiting the area of our attention to accounting and economics, the number of empirical propositions is untenably large.
Williams et al. (Sun,) studied this question.