Abstract
This paper describes a preliminary research project which applies Personal Construct Theory to individual user perceptions of photographs. The background to Personal Construct Theory and to the use of Repertory Grids is presented. The analysis provided by repertory grids is compared with that from various theoretical and practical approaches to indexing visual images, including ‘ofness’ and ‘aboutness’, facet analysis, iconology and MPEG7. A high level of consistency is found among the personal constructs which participants use to distinguish between photographs. The research concludes that repertory grids provide a useful method of collecting unbiased data about what users see in visual images and for comparing user perceptions with alternative retrieval vocabularies and methods. Incorporation of a participant’s constructs in automatic classification systems for visual images remains a major challenge.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Shatford, S.: Analyzing the Subject of a Picture: a Theoretical Approach. Cataloguing and Classification Quarterly 6(3) (1986) 39–62
Markey, K.: Computer-Assisted Construction of a Thematic Catalog of Primary and Secondary Subject Matter. Visual Resources, III. (1983) 16–49
QBIC (IBM): [http://wwwqbic.almaden.ibm.com/]. (2001) Accessed 06/27/01
Kelly, G. A.: The psychology of personal constructs (Vols. 1 and 2). New York: Norton. 2nd printing (1991), Routledge, London (1955)
Bannister, D.: Personal Construct Theory: A Summary and Experimental Paradigm. Acta Psychologica 20: (1968) 104–120
Burke, M.: Personal Construct Theory as a Research Tool in Library and Information Science. Case Study: Development of a User-Driven Classification of Photographs. Proceedings of the Subject Retrieval in a Networked Environment IFLA Satellite Meeting. OCLC, Dublin, Ohio, 14–16 August 2001, In Print (2002)
Gaines, B. R. and M. L. G. Shaw: WebGrid II. [http://repgrid.com/]. (2001) Accessed 06/27/01
Gaines, B. R. and M. L. G. Shaw: WebGrid III. [http://gigi.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/]. (2001) Accessed 05/11/01
Panofsky, E.: Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. Harper and Row, New York (1962)
Ranganathan, S. R.: Elements of Library Classification. 2nd edn. Association of Assistant Librarians, London (1959)
Jaimes, A., Benitez, A., Jörgensen, C, & Chang, S.: Experiments in Indexing Multimedia Data at Multiple Levels. Classification for User Support and Learning. Proceedings of the 11th ASIS&T SIG/CR Classification Research Workshop. Held at the 62nd ASIS&T Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, Nov. 12, 2000. American Society for Information Science and Technology, Silver Spring, MD (2000). 163–168
McKnight, C: The Personal Construction of Information Space. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51(8): (2000) 730–733
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Burke, M.A. (2002). Personal Construct Theory as a Research Tool for Analysing User Perceptions of Photographs. In: Lew, M.S., Sebe, N., Eakins, J.P. (eds) Image and Video Retrieval. CIVR 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2383. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45479-9_40
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45479-9_40
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-43899-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45479-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive