Psychology Department, Bournemouth University, Poole, UK.
School of Psychology, Swansea University, Swansea, UK.
Behav Res Methods. 2023 Oct;55(7):3513-3530. doi: 10.3758/s13428-022-01973-7. Epub 2022 Oct 11.
Subjective ratings have been central to the evaluation of icon characteristics. The current study examined biases in ratings in relation to the context in which icons are presented. Context was manipulated between participants, with some groups rating icon sets with limited variability, and others rating icon sets with wide variability. It was predicted that the context created by the icon set would influence participants' ratings; when the range of icons was limited, this would create bias given participants' expectation that a full range of icon values was being presented. Six key icon characteristics were rated, which were visual (visual complexity, appeal), affective (valence, feelings), and semantic (concreteness, semantic distance). Some icon characteristics were susceptible to rating bias while others were not. Where subjective judgements were being made of visual icon characteristics (appeal/complexity) and highly concrete icons which were very pictorial, there was clear evidence of substantial bias in ratings. The same susceptibility to bias was not evident when ratings relied solely on learned semantic associations or were associated with the emotional attributions made to icons. The dynamic nature of the ratings bias was demonstrated when the rating context was changed without participants' knowledge. When participants rated further blocks of icons providing a different range of the to-be-rated characteristic, this resulted in rapid and dramatic changes in rating behaviour. These findings demonstrate the need for representative sampling of icon characteristics to avoid ratings bias. Practically, this is important when determining the usability of newly designed icon sets in order to avoid over-valuing or under-valuing of key characteristics.
主观评价一直是评估图标特征的核心。本研究考察了与图标呈现的上下文相关的评价偏差。上下文在参与者之间进行了操作，一些组对具有有限可变性的图标集进行评分，而另一些组则对具有广泛可变性的图标集进行评分。预测图标集所创建的上下文将影响参与者的评分；当图标范围有限时，由于参与者期望呈现完整的图标值范围，这将产生偏差。对六个关键图标特征进行了评分，包括视觉（视觉复杂性、吸引力）、情感（情感、感觉）和语义（具体性、语义距离）。一些图标特征容易受到评分偏差的影响，而另一些则不容易。在对视觉图标特征（吸引力/复杂性）和非常具体的非常形象化的图标进行主观判断时，评分中明显存在大量偏差。当仅依赖于学习的语义关联或与对图标做出的情感归因进行评分时，就不会出现同样的偏差倾向。当参与者在不知情的情况下改变评分上下文时，评分偏差的动态性质得到了证明。当参与者进一步评分提供不同范围内要评分的特征的图标块时，评分行为会迅速而显著地发生变化。这些发现表明需要对图标特征进行代表性抽样，以避免评分偏差。实际上，这在确定新设计的图标集的可用性时非常重要，以避免对关键特征的高估或低估。
