Scaling issues in the social sciences

The issue of scale is critical to the understanding of data collection, data representation, data analysis and modeling in the social and biophysical sciences. Integrated assessment models must acknowledge these scale issues in order to evaluate the utility and results of these models. This awareness of scale has been widely recognized in the physical sciences and a variety of tools have been developed to address these scale issues, although there is no general consensus on what tools to apply in what situations. Scale issues have been less widely addressed in the social sciences, but recent literature suggests an increasing awareness. This paper addresses the importance of scale issues to social data as they are related to integrated assessment modeling. A review of terminology related to scale issues is presented to address the vagueness and lack of consensus in this terminology. Scientists from a variety of social disciplines have addressed scale issues from different perspectives and these are briefly reviewed.