Preparing Card Sort Data forMultidimensional Scaling Analysisin Social Psychological Research:A Methodological Approach

摘要

Card sorting is a popular data-gathering technique. Although multidimensionalscaling (MDS) is a statistical analogue of the technique, researchers rarely apply it to thistype of data. The authors' contention is that a barrier to applying MDS to card sorting datais the lack of guidance in the literature about how to organize and prepare the data for analy-sis. The authors describe a method that gives guidance to researchers in the field of socialpsychology who want to analyze card sort data using MDS, which can be used to confirm orvalidate hypotheses about specific social psychological structures hidden in data.