MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS OF CONCEPTS INDUCED FROM BOUNDED PREDICATIVE VALUE-STATEMENTS

Abstract

A conceptual domain was sampled by eliciting own-words statements from 267 college atudents with a domain-bunding question-What is a bad thing to do? Bath respondent produced 10 predicative examples (descriptions of behavior he thought belonged in the domain) but could explicitly disqualify no idea. From the elicited statements, E induced a set of internally consistent, mutually exclusive, emergent concepts by putting statements together that, in E's judgment, said or meant the same thing. 11 different indices of interconcept association (across persons) were tested and evaluated. A 73-concept matrix of association indices was factor-analyzed. Concepts were progressively excluded by objective rules until an interpretable, simple-struoture solution was obtained wit41 31 concepts, comprising 62% of the data.