Eliciting and Representing the Causal Understanding of a Social Concept: a Methodological and Statistical Comparison of Two Methods

  • D. W. Green University College London
  • S. J. Muncer University of Durham
  • T. Heffernan University of Northumbria
  • I. C. McManus University College London

Abstract

We contrast, for the first time, two existing network methods for eliciting the causal understanding of a social psychological concept. Our exemplar was loneliness. In the diagram method individuals draw paths in a diagram to indicate their perceptions of how different presented causal factors interconnect both amongst themselves and to the target factor of loneliness. They then rate the causal strength of these paths. In the grid method they indicate the perceived strength of connection between each and every cause and between each cause and the target factor by choosing one number on a Likert scale. Potentially, these methods might elicit different mental, and hence aggregated, representations of the causes of loneliness because they impose different task demands. We analysed the data from each method in two different ways (factor analysis and inductive eliminative analysis) that have previously been associated with just one method. Factor analysis of the data from the diagram method indicated that different individual diagrams derived from a single common representation. Data from the grid method showed the same outcome when we controlled for response artefacts. Both methods also revealed similar but sparser representations using inductive eliminative analysis. We make certain methodological suggestions in the light of our data and consider theoretically the relationship between lay explanation research and research on social representations.

Published
2003-05-01
Section
Free standing papers