Investigations into Alternative Techniques for Developing Empirical Taxonomies: The Results of Two Plasmodes

Abstract
A research report is made on the applicability of grouping techniques to the data of international relations. The results of this paper suggest some important characteristics of current techniques be considered in selecting a grouping technique. Several goals guided the research: First, it was desired to demonstrate the characteristics of current clustering techniques by employing experiments with known outcomes--plasmodes; secondly, to suggest a measure of similarity that is advantageous in grouping experiments when correlations are of less meaning; and thirdly, to employ the techniques investigated in the plasmode to a substantive problem from international relations. Data were collected on the mileage between a number of cities in the United States. The research suggests that direct factor analysis techniques seem more promising than hierarchical clustering schemes for describing the structure of the spaces defined by the plasmodes.

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