Generating an agent based model from interviews and observations: Procedures and challenges

Abstract

In the course of an increasing impetus to connect agent based simulations to empirical data, also the potentials of qualitative social science methods to inspire such models are explored. In this work, qualitative interviews, participating observation, and document analysis are combined to analyze a political process that relies heavily on the communication and the collaboration of stakeholders to serve as a text based data source for an agent based model of the process. The simulation outcomes are also produced in text format so that they are easily understandable to stakeholders and other users. The simulation reproduces the discussions among the stakeholders and their subsequent decisions, is able to react on changes in their general settings, and can be used to explore different sets of rules for the decision processes and their results. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014.