Elicitation of constructs from elements in CLAD

This feature is currently not supported.

Development status: planned, but no date set.

The current version of CLAD offers no support for elicitation of constructs from elements. Sorry about that. There have been a couple of requests to implement this feature. If more users ask about this, I’ll consider implementing this feature.

There are two main reasons for this feature not being included in CLAD.

The most important one is that I’ve had reasonably good experience with triadic elicitation. I also use dyadic elicitation and the full context form in some cases. I always prefer to use file cards. I’ve noticed that many interviewees try to rearrange the selected file cards, move them around the table, to visualize similarities and differences. Some of them want to hold them in their hands, for example holding two cards with similar elements in their left hand, and holding the card with the element which is different from the other two in their right hand.

I seriously doubt that the computer screen can offer such rich “touch and feel” experience. A computer is inferior in this regard. That is why I’ll continue to use file cards. Other people may not share my “touch and feel” enthusiasm, and there is nothing wrong about that.

The second reason lies in the fact that many variants of elicitation of constructs from elements exist. This translates to many additional lines of code, and I don’t think that the benefits outweigh the necessary efforts.