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Social Representations, Correspondence Factor Analysis and Characterization Questionnaire: a Methodological Contribution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2013

Grégory Lo Monaco ,
Anthony Piermattéo ,
Christian Guimelli  and
Jean-Claude Abric
Grégory Lo Monaco*
Affiliation:
Aix-Marseille Université (France)
Anthony Piermattéo
Affiliation:
Aix-Marseille Université (France)
Christian Guimelli
Affiliation:
Aix-Marseille Université (France)
Jean-Claude Abric
Affiliation:
Aix-Marseille Université (France)
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Grégory Lo Monaco. Aix-Marseille Université, Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale (LPS EA849), 13621 Aix-en-Provence Cedex 1 (France). Phone: +33-0413553491. E mail: gregory.lo-monaco@univ-amu.fr
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Abstract

The characterization questionnaire is inspired by Q-sort methodologies (i.e. qualitative sorting). It consists in asking participants to give their opinion on a list of items by sorting them into categories depending on their level of characterization of the object. This technique allows us to obtain distributions for each item and each response modality (i.e. characteristic vs. not chosen vs. not characteristic). This contribution intends to analyze these frequencies by means of correspondence factor analysis. The originality of this contribution lies in the fact that this kind of analysis has never been used to process data collected by means of this questionnaire. The procedure will be detailed and exemplified by means of two empirical studies on social representations of the good wine and the good supermarket. The interests of such a contribution will be discussed from both methodological points of view and an applications perspective.

El cuestionario de caracterización se inspira en metodologías Q (es decir, clasificación cualitativa). Consiste en pedir a los participantes que den su opinión sobre una lista de artículos, clasificándolos en categorías en función de su nivel de caracterización del objeto. Esta técnica nos permite obtener distribuciones para cada artículo y cada modalidad de respuesta (característico vs. no elegido vs no característico). Esta contribución propone analizar estas frecuencias por medio de análisis factorial de correspondencias. La originalidad de este artículo radica en el hecho de que este tipo de análisis nunca se ha utilizado para procesar datos recogidos mediante este cuestionario. Se detallará y ejemplificará el procedimiento a través de dos estudios empíricos sobre las representaciones sociales del buen vino y el buen supermercado. El interés de dicha contribución será discutido tanto desde el punto de vista metodológico como desde la perspectiva de las aplicaciones.

Keywords

social representationssocial anchoringcharacterization questionnairecorrespondence factor analysisrepresentaciones socialesanclaje socialcuestionario de caracterizaciónanálisis factorial de correspondencias
Type
Research Article
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , November 2012 , pp. 1233 - 1243
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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