Comparison Between Experts’ And Public’s Constructs Revealed By Multiple Methods

The study explores the constructs of experts and the public by different methods and make a comparison between the two groups. Moreover, we verified the consistency of results among different methods. According to the Spreading Activation Model, free association method, choosing association method and independent classification method were used to study the six constructs (culture, love, intelligence, innovation, morals and happiness) of the public, while experts only took part in the free association section of culture and morals’study. We selected the high-frequency associations to apply the Hierarchical Cluster analysis and Multidimensional Scaling analysis. Study 2 & 3 used the high-frequency associations from study 1 as materials. The results shows that experts have more concise constructs than the public at the core level, and their construct models contain strong characteristic of their profession; the three research methods can all provide valid information for construct studies, and free association method can be the first step of other methods.