Multiple Sorting Procedure: Card Sorting Task

The theoretical basis for the approach employed in Study Two is derived from Canter, Brown, and Groat‘s (1985, p.79) notion that ‗an understanding of the categories people use and how they assign concepts to those categories is one of the central clues to the understanding of human behaviour‘. From this position, the research method employed in this study is the Multiple Sorting Procedure, ‗a technique for examining how participants place constructs into categories and how they then label the distinctions between the categories‘ in any given context (Barnett, 2004, p.289).

By sorting materials that characterise the area of interest (e.g. photographs, cards with words, drawings), participants are encouraged to articulate what they give priority in constructing a certain issue (ibid). The rationale for this procedure is that

‗the meanings and explanations associated with an individual‘s use of categories are as important as the actual distribution of elements into the categories‘ (Canter et al., 1985, p.88).

This technique has been used in a variety of psychology research which emphasises the importance of categorisation processes (Barnett, 2004). A range of environmental research has also frequently employed the Multiple Sorting Procedure, such as the meaning of architecture (Groat, 1982), the education and development of architectural concepts (Wilson & Canter, 1990), aesthetic judgement of architectural

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design (Hubbard, 1994), interpretation of built environment (Hubbard, 1996a, 1996b), socialisation and architectural preference (Wilson, 1996), landscape perception (Scott

& Canter, 1997), and social attribution and interior style (Wilson & Mackenzie, 2000). One of the reasons for the Multiple Sorting Procedure being frequently employed in psychology literature is that this technique is able to overcome the shortcomings of questionnaires and interviews in that it does not overly restrict or frame interviewees‘ responses, but rather enables the exploration of participants‘

conceptual systems (Groat, 1982; Scott & Canter, 1997). In contrast with a researcher-imposed approach (over-deterministic framework), the Multiple Sorting Task allows participants to freely categorise provided materials to be sorted (e.g.

photographs) using their own idea. Hence, this technique helps the researcher understand how participants conceptualise a certain issue (Scott & Canter, 1997).

Moreover, the Multiple Sorting Procedure produces more structured data sets which can be analysed by more sophisticated techniques, such as Partial Order Scalogram Analysis (POSA), Smallest Space Analysis (SSA) and Multidimensional Scalogram Analysis (MSA). Therefore, this technique explores participants‘ construct systems in a structured and systematic manner (Barnett, 2004). For the above reasons, the Multiple Sorting Procedure was adopted for understanding how individuals conceptualise Japanese colonial buildings and what constructs and categories they use to interpret the colonial buildings. For this, a card-sorting task using photographic materials was carried out. The detailed procedure is presented in the following sections.

Photographs of Japanese Colonial Buildings

This study used colour photographs of Japanese colonial buildings standing in South Korean society. Although there is academic debate on validity and reliability of the use of photographs in simulating real environment (e.g. Scott & Canter, 1997), photographs have been widely used in the field of psychology (Stamps, 1990; Palmer

& Hoffman, 2001). The set of colour photographs for this study comprised twenty-four buildings built in the period of the Japanese occupation (1911-1945), comprising four of each of the following six building types: government office buildings, educational buildings, commercial business buildings, public cultural buildings,

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residential buildings, and religious buildings (Table 7.1). Canter et al. (1985) and Barnett (2004) agree that the twenty-four photographic cards are suitable for a sorting task. . The photographic cards for this study are provided in Appendix 2.

Table 7.1 A Set of Colonial Buildings for Multiple Sorting Task

List of Colonial Buildings for MST Date of Construction 1. The old Japanese General Government Building 1926

2. The old Seoul City Hall 1926

3. The Seodaemoon Prison History Hall 1908

4. The old Korean Supreme Court 1928

5. Seoul National University medical school (SNU 1) 1908 6. Seoul National University of Technology 1 (SNUT 2) 1942 7. The old main hall of Seoul National University (SNU1) 1931 8. Seoul National University of Technology 2 (SNUT 2) 1942 9. The main hall of Shinsaegye Department Store 1930

10. The old main building of Jeil Bank 1935

11. The old main building of Bank of Korea 1912 12. The Korean Electric Power Corporation office (KEPCO) 1928

13. The old Seoul Railway Station 1925

14. The old Dongdaemoon Stadium 1926

15. The Seoul Municipal Assembly Hall 1935

16. Myungdong Art Hall 1936

17. The old Japanese Residence in Goonsan (Residence 1) 1925 18. The old Japanese Residence in Pusan 1 (Residence 2) 1939 19. The old Japanese Residence in Pusan 2 (Residence 3) 1925 20. The old Japanese Residence in Ulreungdo (Residence 4) 1910 21. Gunsan Dongkuksa Buddhist Temple (Temple 1) 1932 22. Mokpo Higashi-Honganji Temple (Temple 2) 1930 23. Kyeongju Seokyeongsa Buddhist Temple (Temple 3) 1932 24. The old Sorokdo Japanese Shinto Shrine (Shrine) 1935 Note: Government office Buildings (1-4), Educational buildings (5-8), Commercial

business buildings (9-12), Public cultural buildings (13-16), Residential buildings (17-20), Religious buildings (21-24)

Coeterier (1983), who tested the validity of photograph techniques in environmental study, emphasises the importance of participants‘ recognition of the places photographs represent. He reveals that photographs could not be reliably used as

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representations of places because there might be a high probability that even participants who directly experienced places might not recognise the same place in the photograph. In this sense, Scott and Canter (1997) suggests ways to improve participants‘ recognition of photographs, such as using a photograph pool generated by participants for a selection of photographs, as well as the labelling of photographs.

This study adopted two ways to improve the standard of the simulation. Firstly, participants took part in the selection for photographs of the Japanese colonial buildings. Initially, the researcher determined twenty-four Japanese colonial buildings that were frequently mentioned by participants in the questionnaire study (i.e. participants‘ designation of Japanese colonial heritage) and selected colour photographs of each building. During the pilot study, a sample of each participant group was asked whether it was difficult to recognise the buildings. By discarding and changing unrecognised photographs of the buildings, photographs which best clearly represented the subject of colonial buildings were selected. Secondly, identification of the colonial buildings in the photographs was enhanced by attaching labelling to the front of photographs indicating the name of the colonial building today. Additionally, as Canter et al. (1985) and Barnett (2004) suggested, each photographic card was numbered from one to twenty-four in order to facilitate recording the information of each sort.