Archived – CIP-MFS and MFS-CIP - Introduction to the concordance

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The CIP-MFS and MFS-CIP concordances show the relationship between each 6-digit class of CIP Canada 2000 and each detailed class of the Major Field of Study classification. The concordances provide a detailed mapping of the relationships between the two classifications.

The concordances were built from the example programs provided in CIP Canada 2000 to illustrate the content of each of its classes. Each of these programs was coded to MFS, resulting in a total of over 8,000 programs that were double-coded to the two classification systems. These code pairs were then summarized. This summary shows how the educational programs comprising each CIP class map into the categories of the MFS and, conversely, how the programs in each MFS class map into the categories of the CIP.

The concordances are of a type referred to as 'definitional', 'theoretical' or 'unweighted'. Definitional concordances allow users to see the relationships between the classes of the two systems. They are a convenient summary of the similarities and differences between two classifications. Definitional concordances differ from 'empirical', 'statistical' or 'weighted' concordances in that the latter include a measure of the practical significance of each of the class-to-class relationships.

These definitional concordances will be useful to users wanting to understand the conceptual relationships between the CIP and the MFS classifications. The concordances will also provide a structural framework for users wanting to attach weights for conversion of historical time-series. In each case, the weights will be determined by the relative importance of each field of study within the specific data series being converted. Definitional concordances are also a means of effecting one-to-one conversions.

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