Using associative group analysis to investigate underlying cultural assumptions of american and vietnamese

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
----------

PHẠM NGỌC LIÊN

USING ASSOCIATIVE GROUP ANALYSIS TO INVESTIGATE
UNDERLYING CULTURAL ASSUMPTIONS
OF AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE
(SỬ DỤNG PHƯƠNG PHÁP PHÂN TÍCH LIÊN TƯỞNG THEO
NHÓM NHẰM NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC GIẢ ĐỊNH VĂN HÓA ẨN CỦA
NGƯỜI MỸ VÀ NGƯỜI VIỆT)

MA. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60220201

HANOI – 2017


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
----------

PHẠM NGỌC LIÊN

USING ASSOCIATIVE GROUP ANALYSIS TO INVESTIGATE
UNDERLYING CULTURAL ASSUMPTIONS

OF AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE
(SỬ DỤNG PHƯƠNG PHÁP PHÂN TÍCH LIÊN TƯỞNG THEO
NHÓM NHẰM NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC GIẢ ĐỊNH VĂN HÓA ẨN CỦA
NGƯỜI MỸ VÀ NGƯỜI VIỆT)

MA. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60220201
Supervisor: Hoàng Thị Hạnh, PhD

HANOI – 2017


CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY OF STUDY PROJECT REPORT

I hereby certify my authority of the Study Project Report submitted
entitled “Using Associative Group Analysis to Investigate Underlying Cultural
Assumptions” in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of
Arts.

Hanoi 2017
Phạm Ngọc Liên

i


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Best of thanks to all those who helped along the way.

ii


ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the influences of intercultural exposure on schema, or
more specifically, underlying cultural assumption shifting by applying Associative
Group Analysis on three groups of Americans, Vietnamese students in a group
called Hanoikids in Hanoi with frequent international exposure and Vietnamese
students in Lao Cai province with little to none exposure. The results show that
although there are a few similarities between Hanoikids and the other groups, those
are not systematic and/or can be explained by factors other than cultural identity. It
suggests that people from the same culture or country might have distinctive
schema on even everyday concepts. Thus, assumptions about a person based on
where he/she comes from might prove to be misjudgments. To avoid that, it is
advisable that we also pay attention to the aspect of individuality on top of cultural
identity in intercultural situations.

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LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
TABLES
Table 1.1: Numbers of words and total weighted scores of the three groups for each
theme word ................................................................................................................ 41

FIGURES
SEMANTOGRAPHS
Figure 1.1: Semantograph for the theme “Graduation” .......................................... 15
Figure 2.1: Semantograph for the theme “A Good Job” ......................................... 19

Figure 3.1: Semantograph for the theme “Ambition” ............................................. 22
Figure 4.1: Semantograph for the theme “Moving out” .......................................... 25
Figure 5.1: Semantograph for the theme “Parents” ................................................. 29
Figure 6.1: Semantograph for the theme “Happiness” ............................................ 31
Figure 7.1: Semantograph for the theme “Freedom” ............................................... 34
Figure 8.1: Semantograph for the theme “LGBT” ................................................... 36
Figure 9.1: Semantograph for the theme “Travel Around the World” .................... 39

WORD CLOUDS
Word cloud 1.1 & 1.2: Word clouds for the theme “Graduation” from Hanoikids
and American respondents ...................................................................................... 16
Word cloud 2.1 & 2.2: Word clouds for the theme “A Good Job” from Hanoikids
and American respondents ....................................................................................... 20
Word cloud 3.1 & 3.2: Word clouds for the theme “Ambition” from Hanoikids and
American respondents .............................................................................................. 23
Word cloud 4.1 & 4.2: Word clouds for the theme “Moving out” from Hanoikids
and American respondents ....................................................................................... 27
Word cloud 5.1 & 5.2: Word clouds for the theme “Parents” from Hanoikids and
American respondents .............................................................................................. 30

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Word cloud 6.1 & 6.2: Word clouds for the theme “Happiness” from Hanoikids
and American respondents ....................................................................................... 32
Word cloud 7.1 & 7.2: Word clouds for the theme “Freedom” from Hanoikids and
American respondents .............................................................................................. 35
Word cloud 8.1 & 8.2: Word clouds for the theme “LGBT” from Hanoikids and
American respondents .............................................................................................. 37
Word cloud 9.1 & 9.2: Word clouds for the theme “Travel Around the World” from

Hanoikids and American respondents ..................................................................... 40

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY OF STUDY PROJECT REPORT .................... i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................ii
ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................. iii
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES .......................................................................... iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................... vi
INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 1
1.

Identification of the problem and rationale ................................................... 1

2.

Aims of the study ........................................................................................... 3

4.

Scope of the study.......................................................................................... 4

5.

Methodology .................................................................................................. 5

CHAPTER 1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND ................................................ 6
1.1.

Literature review............................................................................................ 6

1.1.1.

Culture and intercultural competence ..................................................... 6

1.1.2.

Schema and underlying cultural assumptions......................................... 7

1.2.

Previous Studies ............................................................................................ 7

CHAPTER 2. ASSOCIATIVE GROUP ANALYSIS: METHOD AND
PROCEDURE ......................................................................................................... 10
2.1.

Research groups ........................................................................................... 10

2.2.

The Associative Group Analysis method and procedure ............................ 10

CHAPTER 3. FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS ........................................................ 15
3.1.

Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “Graduation” . 15

3.2. Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme
“(A) Good Job” ...................................................................................................... 18
3.3.

Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “Ambition” .... 22

3.4.

Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “Moving out” 25

3.5.

Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “Parents” ....... 28

3.6.

Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “Happiness” .. 31

vi


3.7.

Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “Freedom” ..... 33

3.8.

Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “LGBT” ......... 36

3.9. Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “Travel Around

the World”.............................................................................................................. 38
3.10. Finding Summary and Discussion ............................................................... 40
CHAPTER 4. CONCLUSION ............................................................................... 46
4.1.

Findings ....................................................................................................... 46

4.2.

Implications ................................................................................................. 47

4.3.

Limitations ................................................................................................... 47

4.4.

Suggestions for further studies .................................................................... 48

REFERENCES ........................................................................................................ 49
APPENDICES ........................................................................................................... I
Appendix 1. English Survey Form .......................................................................... I
Appendix 2. Vietnamese Survey Form ................................................................... II

vii


INTRODUCTION
1.

Identification of the problem and rationale

Terms such as “the American culture”, “the Vietnamese culture” or “the Japanese
culture” are ubiquitous in our daily life and even research articles. These terms
seem to indicate that each country has only one uniform culture, which, if not
everyone, then at least the majority of people in it would share. This kind of
assumption often appears in intercultural situations, such as the one below between
two Hanoikids members, the students who work as free tour guide in Hanoi, and
their American guests. The audio was recorded in an attempt to gather data for this
research exclusively.
American 1 (A1): Russians, they’re not that nice. They're really cold.
Hanoikids 1 (H1): Yes, as cold as their weather.
A1: And then Vietnamese are as warm as their weather.
(both laugh)
H1: Yeah, so Africans are the most… the friendliest in the world.
A1: Uhm. I think so. We've been there a few months, they're very friendly.
H1: I went to the south, Nha Trang and Phan Thiet. That's the place in Vietnam where
there're many Russian tourists.
A1: Really?
H1: Because they have a straight flight from Russia to the city.
[...]
H1: So for Russians - they're really beautiful but they're not that friendly, uhm, so. I went
there, not during the summer vacation - I just took some days off.
Hanoikids 2 (H2): To Nha Trang?
H1: Yeah, I went travelling but after that we had a kind of tourism presentation so we
conducted a kind of survey to ask the tourists and ask if they could record. But when we

1

approached them...
A1: Oh (laugh)
H1: Yeah, they just give me a really very cold expression so… they're just like mafia.
A1: It feels like mafia.
H1: Yeah.
H2: Russians are like mafia? Because when listening to mafia, we just like think of
Italians.
[...]
A1: But Russians are also really pretty.
A2: But of course they're cold.
H1&H2: Yeah.
[...]
H1: You know, Vietnamese really like Russians because they helped us a lot during the
war, they do.
A2: Up until now?
H1: Yeah, until now, like people from my parents' generation.
A1: Ah.
H1: They really like Russians. My dad, when he went to Russia, how to say, he said that
they really welcome, was really welcomed there. He really likes Russians.
A1: Oh really?
A2: Older generation?
H1: Yeah.
H2: Yeah, different from the younger generation. They suffered from something bad,
like World War II.
H1: Like US war, so they shared the same pain. Oh, and we have something like, English
or British are really cold. They're really cold.
A2: They don’t talk much.

2

H1: Yeah, they're kind of reserved, and then, but then there's a story that because
England is so foggy, so we're this close, but because of the fog so we can't see each
other. So it appears they're cold but they're not really, because they don't see you. (H.
Nguyen, M. Nguyen, personal communication, June 19, 2016)

There are many generic country and cultural assumptions here, from the weather of
a country (“England is so foggy”), its people’s physical appearances (“Russians are
also really pretty”), to their characteristics (Russians “are really cold”, British “are
kind of reserved”). These assumptions often imply the homogeneity of
characteristics or sharing of identity among people from the same country, or
culture.
However, would individuals really be shaped by only just where they come from?
How are their personal values affected by their geographical dwellings and/or their
native culture? How do international and/or intercultural experiences exert impacts
on their beliefs and values?
To seek answers for those questions, the research is carried out by studying the
three groups of the U.S. residents whose mother tongue is English, the Vietnamese
from Lao Cai province, Vietnam, whose first language is Vietnamese, and
Hanoikids club’s members, who are students in Hanoi conducting free tour guiding
for foreigners visiting their city.
2.

Aims of the study

The first purpose of this paper is to investigate an often alleged assumption made in
intercultural communications, that people from the same country or culture share a
higher degree of similarity in identity than those from a different one.
The argument is that, in this day and age of globalization, with easy access to
various sources of up-to-date, all-over-the-world information, foreign music,

reading materials and cinematography, and the development of transportations

3


leading to more convenient traveling, the intercultural exchange frequency is higher
than ever and still increasing. Thus, for people enjoying large intercultural exposure,
it is possible to develop background knowledge and values very different from
those of the same nationality/culture with less exposure, while more similar to a
foreign culture.
The second purpose of this paper is to examine if the effect of intercultural exposure
on individuals of the same group is definitive, i.e., if it results in consistent outcome,
such as tending towards being more similar to another certain culture, for each
person.
3.

Research questions

The research is designed to offer answers for the following questions:
a, To what extent do people from each nation share the same set of cultural
values? How does this affect its people in terms of underlying cultural assumptions,
or schemata?
b, How would exposure to international and/or intercultural situations impact
individuals?
4.

Scope of the study

Due to limited resources, the research focuses on investigating only three groups:
thirty-two Americans, thirty-four Hanoikids members – Vietnamese students with

high international interaction frequency and thirty-two Vietnamese students with
low international interaction frequency. It is to compare if the two Vietnamese
groups demonstrate substantially higher degree of similarity than the group from a
foreign culture. U.S. residents are chosen to be in this study as they are often
regarded as a culture with values on the other end of the spectrum compared to
oriental cultures like the Vietnamese’s, as well as because of their popularity and
strong influences worldwide. Moreover, the United States also offer one of the

4


greatest number of guests for Hanoikids (along with Australia, Singapore and
Canada – number in 2016), therefore, Hanoikids members are more likely to be
affected by their culture than others’.
5.

Methodology

The study employs the Associative Group Analysis, which is specialized on
analyzing cultural background knowledge, and in this case, an indicator for
underlying cultural assumptions of each group. This is a method employing both
psychology and linguistics approaches, most commonly used in intercultural studies,
making the research an interdisciplinary one. The method and procedure will be
described in more details in Chapter II.

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CHAPTER 1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
1.1.

Literature review

1.1.1. Culture and intercultural competence
Ryan (2010) argues that people from different nations (“people at national level”)
would take up upon different sets of values and beliefs that distinguish them from
others, and those make up the concept of culture – “the glue that bonds individuals
to help them interact in an efficient and harmonious way.” (p. 215)
However, while an exact definition of culture has not yet been agreed upon by the
scholars, many works, especially recent ones, do not refer to culture as belonging to
a nation, instead, a specific group only. The definition of Nieto (1999) suggests that
culture is “... the ever-changing values, traditions, social and political relationships,
and worldview created, shared and transformed by a group of people” (p.48); this
view on culture is also shared by Moeller & Nugent (2014), that culture is an everchanging entity.
From this definition, in order to perform well in intercultural environments, a
person needs to possess a specific set of skills and/or competence to deal with
intercultural situations, which has been named intercultural competence by some
scholars (Byram, 1997; Deardorff, 2006). Intercultural competence can be defined,
in very broad sense, as the ability to interact appropriately with people from a
culture foreign from one’s own (Sinicrope et al., 2012).
An exact definition for this concept has so far been elusive, but one of the more
recent viewpoints by Arasaratnam (2009), similar to the model by Chen & Starosta
(1996), states that there are three dimensions to this competence, namely Cognitive
(or cognitive complexity), Affective (affective empathy) and Behavioral (both
interculturally and interpersonally). This model follows the model of human
competence in the field of cognitive psychology under different names: knowledge

6

(cognitive), motivation (affective) and skills (behavioral) dating back to the 1950s’
works of Bloom (1956) and Havighurst (1957).
The research focuses on the cognitive dimensions of intercultural competence. It
investigates specifically the knowledge about and attitude towards the same
concepts of subjects from different groups, to be more exact, the schemata of one
group of Americans and two of Vietnamese.
1.1.2. Schema and underlying cultural assumptions
Schemata, as defined by Nishida (1999), are “generalized collections of past
experiences which are organized into related knowledge groups and are used to
guide our behaviors in familiar situations” (p.401). This term was coined by the
psychologist Bartlett (1932) to refer to the previous knowledge that directs our
behaviors under a new stimuli. A person gains cultural schemata by storing certain
information that appears repeatedly in interactions with people from the same
culture. Without cultural schema, people may have difficulties making sense of
unfamiliar situations (Malcolm & Sharifian, 2000). In this research, the aspect of
underlying cultural assumptions of schema is emphasized.
After collecting the data about underlying cultural assumptions of the three groups,
the research then compares and contrasts if the schemata of the two Vietnamese
groups resemble each other, and if those differ from the American’s. By doing so,
the research hopes to determine whether individuals in each group share common
schema, and if those of two groups from the same nation or culture would resemble
each other more closely than another nation/culture’s.
1.2.

Previous Studies

Matveev & Merz (2014) noted that a wide range of intercultural competence
assessment tools are being utilized for different purposes and in different contexts
and disciplines. Among these tools, a few aim at evaluating the performance of an

7


individual, specifically, the communication performance (McCroskey, 1982) or
sometimes, both communication and behavioral performance (Byram, 1997), as an
indicator of intercultural competence. Other tend to focus more on the potential to
perform well in intercultural context rather than on the performance itself
(Arasaratnam & Doerfel, 2005; Dervin, 2010).
However, while attitude and behaviors are substantially easier to observe, implicit
cultural perceptions and values are “methodologically more difficult to investigate”
(Linowes et. al., 2000, p.75). To tackle the issue, Szalay & Deese (1978) developed
a tool for cultural mental representations, which is the Associative Group Analysis
(AGA). It is based on the argument that people sharing the same culture would have
similar sets of concept associations, thus a mental map of concept representations
would describe the culture’s dominant mindset and by extension, its belief as well
(Szalay & Deese, 1978; Linowes et. al., 2000).
The method has been employed in several studies, such as by Kelly & Szalay (1972)
to investigate the effect of an student exchange program to the United States on
Korean students, Linowes et. al. (2000) to highlight the differences in patterns of
thinking by American and Japanese, or by Ryan (2006, 2010) to give insights into
the potential conflicts in specific intercultural contexts.
Kelly & Szalay (1972) investigated the common assumption behind students
exchange programs that these would promote cultural and political understandings.
Their research investigated the views of three groups, each consisted of fifty
students from the U.S., South Korea, who had been enjoying American college
educations and those who had never travelled abroad respectively, on four systemic
themes, four social interaction themes and the United States. The results showed
that the Koreans having studied in the U.S. demonstrated slightly higher positive
correlations with American students than their counterparts from the home country
in the systemic themes, and indicated that exchange students had significantly more

8


positive attitude towards the United States compared to their Korean peers (75%
positive response versus 45%).
The research by Linowes et. al. (2000) attempted to investigate and illustrate the
differences of young American and Japanese patterns of thinking in the domain of
international business by using AGA on 100 respondents from each national groups.
It then came to the conclusions that the two groups indeed possessed different
“dominant mindset” (Linowes et. al., 2000, p. 95), in that Japanese youngsters were
more collectivism-minded, while still showing explicit traces of “vertical conflict
and peer rivalry” (p. 95). The researchers also noted that the method offers a “fuller
picture of different cultural understandings than traditional survey approaches have
shown” (p. 96).
The papers by Ryan (2006, 2010) aimed to explore the differences in the way
American and Japanese perceived certain concepts in university and business
contexts, but with no intentions to draw an extensive mental map for each culture.
The research in 2010 suggested that “culturally-based schemata are largely
unrecognized and often disruptive in cross-cultural contexts” and that the
differences in cultural schemata would lead to perception deviations and thus
dissimilar interpretations of key concepts, possibly resulting in disagreements and
conflicts.
All in all, the aforementioned researches have used AGA to draw inferences about
the understanding of certain concepts of different cultures and commented on the
notable advantages of this method compared to traditional survey instruments.

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CHAPTER 2. ASSOCIATIVE GROUP ANALYSIS: METHOD AND
PROCEDURE
2.1.

Research groups

The research was conducted on three different groups.
The first group is Americans holding citizenship of the United States as well as
English as their mother tongue. There are thirty-two such respondents, with eleven
males and twenty-one females, ranging from twenty-one to sixty-six years old with
the average age being 32.63.
The second one are native Vietnamese students from Hanoikids Club, a student-run
organization in Hanoi with its main activity being tour-guiding for foreign visitors
to Hanoi, which conditions their members to extensive exposure to inter-cultural
environment and good chances to build up their English vocabulary. The research
group contains thirty-four members from Hanoikids, four males, twenty-eight
females and two of unstated sexes, from eighteen to twenty-five of age, the average
being 23.12.
The last group (hereby referred to as the Vietnamese group) consists of Vietnamese
students from the same class in a university in Lao Cai province, a mountainous
area in Vietnam, who receive from none to little education on English and hardly
get exposure to inter-cultural environment and communication. There are two males
and thirty females in this group, comprising twenty-two members in total, with their
age ranging from nineteen to twenty years old, and the average age for this group is
19.41.
2.2.

The Associative Group Analysis method and procedure

In order to gain understandings about the similarities and differences in schemata

(in other words, background knowledge), as well as the mindset and attitudes of

10


different groups, the research employed the method of Associative Group Analysis
(hereby referred to as AGA).
The Associate Group Analysis (AGA) method was originally developed by Szalay
and Deese (1978) to identify differences in cross-cultural perception, then further
adapted by Linowes et. al. (2000) for a more visually interpretation of these
differences. The general procedure can be described as followed.
Participants from the two first groups were contacted first by an email asking for
their acceptance to join the research by means of filling in the survey form. Then,
the survey, embedded with a note of consent, was sent to their email address. The
note of consent was also embedded in the printed form for the last groups.
Each participant was presented with a survey form consisting of two parts: the first
part is a demographical questionnaire to collect his or her basic personal
information, as well as their frequency of international exposure and their level of
English in communication, and the second is a list of theme words with spaces to
write his or her free associations of the given theme words. The first and second
groups (Americans and Hanoikids) were presented with the theme words in English
in an online survey, while the last one (Vietnamese) were shown the Vietnamese
equivalent in the printed form. This was for the convenience of collecting responses,
as the first and second groups could only be reached via online survey due to
geographical distance, whilst the last group study in the same class; even though it
may create discrepancies in reply patterns as the last group sit close with each other,
leaving a chance for them to copy each other’s responses.
Originally, there were nine theme words employed in the research. Those were
“Graduation” (“Tốt nghiệp”), “A Good Job” (“Một công việc tốt”), “Ambition”
(“Tham vọng”), “Moving out” (“Chuyển ra ở riêng”), “Parents” (“Phụ huynh”),

“Happiness” (“Hạnh phúc”), “Freedom” (“Tự do”), “LGBT” (“Đồng tính nam,
đồng tính nữ, song tính và chuyển giới (LGBT)”), “Travel around the world” (“Du

11


lịch vòng quanh thế giới”) and “Friendly” (“Thân thiện”). These words were chosen
because they demonstrate concepts that are familiar to both Americans and
Vietnamese, so the chances that participants misunderstand the theme words are
slim. Also, the theme words consist of both less abstract concepts (“Parents”,
“Graduation”) and more abstract ones (“Happiness”, “Ambition”), as well as
common items (“A Good Job”, “Moving out”) and more recently introduced ones,
at least to the Vietnamese society (“LGBT”). The variations are hoped to also
contribute to the detection of possible deviations, if any, in association patterns of
the research groups as regard to the mentioned aspects.
Each research group’s participants then were asked to make free associations, or
write down the first words that come to their minds, when reading the given theme
word. Each response receives a weighted score according to its order of appearance
in the participant’s theme word response list. The original weighted score
distributions follow “the differential stability of rank place, assessed by the testretest method” (Kelly, 1985): beginning with the first association, the weighted
score of each response is 6, 5, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1. However, as regards to
the scale of the research with the number of responses for each theme word from
each participant fluctuates from one to six, this weighted score distributions are
adapted to a rank order of 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1 for six responses from the first to the last.
For example, as a reply to the theme word “Travel around the world”, one
American in the research wrote down the following responses: “Exciting, important,
essential, education, growth, memories” in that exact order. In this case, the first
word, “exciting” gets a weighted score of five points, the second, “important”, gets
a four, “essential” – three, “education” – two, “growth” and “memories” both take a
one. The limit for number of responses was applied because it allows the

participants to quickly and easily make associations, resulting in a compact list of
associations most obvious to the schema of the theme word while checking the less
apparent ones, thus showing most relevant and dominant definition and attributes of
the term and/or the group’s attitudes toward it.

12


The responses then were classified into categories of meanings and/or concepts, and
each category was assigned a total weighted score of the words it contains. In order
to boost the accuracy of the classification, the author cross-checked the meanings
and implications of problematic words in several dictionaries, including the Oxford
Dictionary for Advanced Learners, Collins Cobuilds, and Webster-Mariam. The
classification was then re-checked by a trusted American acquaintance. Afterwards,
these categories’ degrees of relative prominence were analyzed in the attempt to
depict the image of the theme word in each research group’s mind, or its members’
attitude towards the theme concept. This procedure was applied to all other theme
words. In the final analysis, only nine themes, excluding the theme word “Friendly”,
are included, because too many among the responses for this theme are ambiguous
and can not be classified into categories.
After the dominant mindset of each research group for each theme word had been
devised, further analysis was carried out to compare and contrast the groups’
schemata for the theme word, illustrated by a semantograph of weighted score
distributions of the theme word’s categories of meaning and word clouds made by
word appearance frequency. Then, a comprehensive evaluation is offered to
pinpoint the unique characteristics of each group regarding given concepts, thus
creating awareness about possible deviations in the way certain groups perceive the
same concept, which may help infer the underlying cultural values that each group
have.
In AGA, each theme word (“stimulus word”, Kelly, 1985) is regarded as the unit of

analysis. It can also be viewed as a trigger for research participants to think about
the concept before working out its associations.
AGA is commented to be “an unstructured method of research used to reconstruct
people’s subjective images from the spontaneous distributions of their free
associations” (Linowes et. al., 2000). The research takes on AGA approach as it
emphasizes the shared aspects of each group’s schema for the concept, given by

13


spontaneous associations, thus are more likely to be honest and/or precise than
answers for traditional surveys (Ryan, 2010). Those tools are heavily based on the
assumption that respondents answer the questions honestly with confidence and
understanding about their own capacity, as well as the ability to grade themselves
accurately. This proves to be unattainable in most cases, which leads to inaccuracy
in one way or another in assessment results. According to Ryan (2006), this
methodology “offers a more in-depth content analysis of the overall data than that
of survey instruments alone”.

14


CHAPTER 3. FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS
3.1. Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme
“Graduation”

education
transition

celebration

accomplishment
feelings

VN
HNKs

employment

US
time

evaluation
relationship
unclassified
0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

Figure 1.1: Semantograph for the theme “Graduation”
The responses of the three groups in regards to the theme word “Graduation” are
classified into ten categories, among which the six most significant (accounting for
noticeably larger percentage of the response weight compared to the other four) are
the categories of education (diploma, learning, college, etc.), feelings towards the
event of graduation (relieved, exciting, independent, etc.), employment (job, salary,
career),

transition

(adulthood,

future,

finished,

etc.),

accomplishments

(achievement, success, goal, etc.) and celebration (ceremony, cap, walk, etc.).
Among those, the categories of education, celebration and transition are the three

15


most prominent for American respondents, earning respectively 18, 17 and 17 % of
the total weighted score, while those for Hanoikids members are the feelings
towards the event of graduation, employment and education (31, 28, and 19%
respectively). This is also the case for the Vietnamese group, but with different ratio

(10, 17 and 59% respectively), and thus, different standings in prominence as well.
The differences between the vocabulary used by the American group and the
Hanoikids group is also illustrated in the word clouds below.

Word cloud 1.1 & 1.2: Word clouds for the theme “Graduation” from
Hanoikids (left) and American respondents (right)
The word clouds are generated using the frequency of the words appearing in the
response lists of the two groups. The more a word appears in the response list, the
bigger it is in the word cloud. Only two word clouds from the American group and
the Hanoikids group are created, as those are in English while the responses from
the Vietnamese group are in Vietnamese, thus creating potential cross-language
discrepancy, making the comparison among word clouds irrelevant.
In the Hanoikids respondents’ word cloud, the most prominent words are job,
freedom and money, and in its counterpart, college, success and completion. Those
for the Vietnamese group are translated to be distinction, credit and job.
The semantograph and the word clouds indicate the different associative traits of the
groups regarding the theme word “Graduation”. While for the group of American

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