A Probabilistic Approach to Card Sort Analysis

• Main Author: Bin Amer, Hadeel Hatim
• Other Authors: Hepting, Daryl, Hilderman, Robert, Butz, Cortney J., Zhao, Yang, Deif, Ahmed
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina 2018
• Subjects: First Nations
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10294/8437; https://ourspace.uregina.ca/bitstream/handle/10294/8437/Bin_Amer_Hadeel_PhD_CS_Spring2018.pdf

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science, University of Regina. xi, 133 p. The work in this dissertation was motivated by the desire to more fully understand the results of a card sorting study of facial photographs. Twenty-five participants were asked to sort 356 facial photographs (178 of Caucasian males and 178 of First Nations’ males) into an unconstrained number of piles according to their judgments of similarity. Researchers have used card sorting to understand different concepts, but not facial similarity. Therefore, the work presented in the dissertation is novel because it takes an existing method and applies it to a new context and adapts analysis tools to this purpose. Pairs of photos in the same pile were deemed to be judged “similar” and those in different piles were deemed to be judged “dissimilar”. There are 63,190 pairs possible from 356 photos. It is clear that participants did not, nor could not, make all these pairwise comparisons directly. The study was executed, analyzed, and described by other researchers at the University of Regina, but there remain unresolved questions from the data that it produced. Some participants made very few piles which others made very many: should the information provided by each participant be treated equally? Is there enough information in the sorting of the cards to uncover how participants have judged facial similarity, with different participants using possibly different strategies? Perhaps it would be more productive to work with a smaller number of photos, but how should these photos be selected and what number of photos is neither “too many” nor “too few”? If the majority of participants agree that a photo pair is similar or dissimilar, that pair may not help to discern different strategies that participants may be using. Therefore, it is possible to consider the data in terms of a three-way decision: if 16 or more of the 25 ...