Description

ANTHROPAC is a menu-driven DOS program for collecting and analyzing data on cultural domains. The program helps collect and analyze structured qualitative and quantitative data including freelists, pilesorts, triads, paired comparisons, and ratings. ANTHROPAC's analytical tools include techniques that are unique to Anthropology, such as consensus analysis, as well as standard multivariate tools such as multiple regression, factor analysis, cluster analysis, multidimensional scaling and correspondence analysis. In addition, the program provides a wide variety of data manipulation and transformation tools, plus a full-featured matrix algebra language.

ANTHROPAC is accompanied by a 150-page Reference Manual, a 60-page User's Guide, and a 40-page Methods Guide (which provides basic background information on the methods of cultural domain analysis). These manuals are provided in electronic form, not paper.

Program Capabilities

Collecting Proximity Data

Process qualititative pilesort and freelist data. Construct individually randomized triad tests, paired comparisons, and rating/ranking questionnaires. Data collected using these instruments are automatically unrandomized by the program so that the data are comparable across respondents. Compute measures of similarities/distances among items or respondents.

Analyze Proximity Data

Perform metric and non-metric multidimensional scaling of up to 180 items. Correspondence analysis, factor analysis, and cluster analysis. Test hypotheses of underlying perceptual dimensions via PROFIT analysis. Test other hypotheses of proximity data with matrix correlation (QAP) and matrix regression (MRQAP).

Perform metric and non-metric multidimensional scaling of up to 180 items. Correspondence analysis, factor analysis, and cluster analysis. Test hypotheses of underlying perceptual dimensions via PROFIT analysis. Test other hypotheses of proximity data with matrix correlation (QAP) and matrix regression (MRQAP).

Attitude Scaling

Construct, test and modify Guttman and Likert scales of underyling attitudes/traits. ANTHROPAC makes it easy to drop items and rerun the analysis to arrive at the optimum combination of items.

Consensus Analysis

Evaluate the extent and type of intracultural variability in a sample, Assess the extent of informants' knowledge of a cultural domain. The ANTHROPAC implementation handles true/false, multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, and interval data.

Data Transformations

Routines for transforming data, including symmetrizing, dichotomizing, recoding, reversin, transposing, standardizing, reshaping, sorting, normalizaing, permuting and collapsing matrices, and extracting submatrices.

Data Management

Copy, delete, rename, merge, display, edit, browse, and print datasets. Also export and import data to and from ASCII formats for communication with other programs.