About Prof. Paul Hackett
My research
My research is concerned with the categorial understanding that humans and other non-human animals have of their world and how such understanding underpins and facilitates behaviour. This interest draws upon several branches of psychology, philosophy, art, sociology, anthropology, ethnography and psychometrics and research methods in my research into cognition, affect, behaviour and experience.
Over three plus decades I have developed a qualitative and philosophical orientation within the facet theory perspective and an approach to research known as the declarative mapping approach (DMA) and its major component the declarative mapping sentence (DMS). The DMA has facilitated my being able to advance an ontological and mereological understanding of many aspects of the lives of both human and non-human animals.
The theoretical DMA framework that I have proposed has enabled me, my students and collaborators to conduct empirical investigations that has allowed the development of the facet theory research approach outside of its traditional quantitative, psychometric applications. This has been brought about by conducting studies within areas such as philosophy from the African continent, education, marketing, consumer behaviour, business, management, environmentalism, health and wellbeing, medical practice, avian cognition and many other areas.
The qualitative facet theory approach, along with the declarative mapping sentence, is continuing to enable research to be conducted and knowledge to be developed in areas of behaviour and experience that involve complex arrays of multiple variables within the situation of the behaviour’s occurrence. My visiting positions at Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Tufts, Trinity St David, and several other universities have, and continue to, enable me to expand my research and my writing and my position as visiting research professor at Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Nigeria has facilitated the philosophical extension of my scholarship.
My more than 250 publications include over 25 books and my articles have appeared in leading journals such as: Frontiers in Psychology and Sociology; International Journal of Social Research Methodology; Psychometrika; Environment and Behavior; Multivariate Behavior Research; Perceptual and Motor Skills; Personality and Individual Differences. My teaching also embraces and directly involves the conceptualising of behaviour (in its broadest sense) as being complex, holistic and best understood using multi-component approaches and complex qualitative methods.