Example: An Examination of Kinship Terms

Rosenberg and Kim ¹ set out to analyze 15 kinship terms (aunt, brother, cousin, daughter, father, granddaughter, grandfather, grandmother, grandson, mother, nephew, niece, sister, son, uncle). They asked four groups of college students (two female, two male) to sort these terms on the basis of similarities. Two groups (one female, one male) were asked to sort twice, with the second sorting based on a different criteria from the first sort. Thus, a total of six “sources” were obtained, as outlined in the following table.

Table 1. Source structure of kinship data
Source	Gender	Condition	Sample size
1	Female	Single sort	85
2	Male	Single sort	85
3	Female	First sort	80
4	Female	Second sort	80
5	Male	First sort	80
6	Male	Second sort	80

Each source corresponds to a 15 x 15 proximity matrix, whose cells are equal to the number of people in a source minus the number of times that the objects were partitioned together in that source. This dataset can be found in kinship_dat.sav. See the topic Sample Files for more information.

¹ Rosenberg, S., and M. P. Kim. 1975. The method of sorting as a data-gathering procedure in multivariate research. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 10, 489-502.