The “Associative Network”: a technique for detecting structure, contents, polarity and stereotyping indexes of the semantic fields
European Review of Applied Psychology, 52 (3-4):
181-200 (2002)Zusammenfassung
This article presents a technique aimed at identifying the structure, contents, polarity, neutrality and stereotyping indexes of the semantic field associated with specific representations. Within a general outline of experimental tasks and administrative procedures, the following aspects are described in detail: criteria for the choice and presentation of stimulus-words, identifiable information, contents and structure of the semantic field, order of elicitation of words, order of importance of words for subjects, the construction of the textual “web” and the disambiguation of meanings through branching patterns among words and connections between groups of words; polarity and neutrality indexes as synthetic measures of the evaluative and attitudinal components implicit in social representations; stereotyping index; procedures of codifying textual and non-textual data and different strategies of data analysis. These emphasise both the dimension linked to the contents and structure of the representational field (Spad-T, Evoc 2000) and aspects that are more focused on the discourse dynamics implicit in the roles and functions of the different categories of texts (DiscAn).