“ A serious attempt to answer the vague question posed by Schmidt (1992) of “What Do Data Really Mean?” reveals an answer that is rewarding than you might initially think, because, according to the philosophical hermeneuticist Hans-Georg Gadamer*, meaning is to be found not in the study or in the author, but between the study and the reader, specifically, in the reader’s application of the study (1990, 308-9 & 521). The meaning of a study lies beyond the study.
