Several methodological issues in the multidimensional scaling of coarse dissimilarities were studied, examining whether it was better to scale dissimilarity data directly or to scale a new matrix derived from the original by row comparisons. Findings support an alternative row-comparison measure based on the Jacard coefficient. (SLD)

Three dissimilarity measures for the unconstrained sorting task are investigated. All three are metrics, but differ in the kind of compensation which they make for differences in the sizes of cells within sortings. Empirical tests of the measures are done with sorting data for occupations names and the names of behaviors, using multidimensional…

Suggests a way of using factor analytic techniques to supplement multidimensional scaling in such a way as to provide a firm basis for evaluating multidimensional representations. (Author/RC)

Correspondence analysis can provide spatial or clustering representations by assigning spatial coordinates minimizing the distance between individuals linked by a sociometric relationship. These scales may then be used to identify individuals' locations in a multidimensional representation of a group's structure or to reorder the rows and columns…

Two sets of real sorting data from 50 college students are used to compare results of multidimensional scaling of raw co-occurrence frequencies or dissimilarity measures (D) and profile distances (delta) to determine which yields a better representation of the underlying structure of 2 sets of stimuli. Slight differences are discussed. (SLD)