Sometimes, often, and always: Exploring the vague meanings of frequency expressions

被引:33
作者
Bocklisch, Franziska [1 ]
Bocklisch, Steffen F. [2 ]
Krems, Josef F. [1 ]
机构
[1] Tech Univ Chemnitz, Dept Psychol, D-09107 Chemnitz, Germany
[2] Tech Univ Chemnitz, Dept Automat, D-09107 Chemnitz, Germany
关键词
Translation procedure; Linguistic terms; Frequency expressions; Vagueness; Fuzzy membership functions; Verbal rating scale; PROBABILITY; SCALES;
D O I
10.3758/s13428-011-0130-8
中图分类号
B841 [心理学研究方法];
学科分类号
040201 ;
摘要
The article describes a general two-step procedure for the numerical translation of vague linguistic terms (LTs). The suggested procedure consists of empirical and model components, including (1) participants' estimates of numerical values corresponding to verbal terms and (2) modeling of the empirical data using fuzzy membership functions (MFs), respectively. The procedure is outlined in two studies for data from N = 89 and N = 109 participants, who were asked to estimate numbers corresponding to 11 verbal frequency expressions (e.g., sometimes). Positions and shapes of the resulting MFs varied considerably in symmetry, vagueness, and overlap and are indicative of the different meanings of the vague frequency expressions. Words were not distributed equidistantly across the numerical scale. This has important implications for the many questionnaires that use verbal rating scales, which consist of frequency expressions and operate on the premise of equidistance. These results are discussed for an exemplar questionnaire (COPSOQ). Furthermore, the variation of the number of prompted LTs (5 vs. 11) showed no influence on the words' interpretations.
引用
收藏
页码:144 / 157
页数:14
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