arXiv:2602.12575cs.CLcs.LG2026-02

不依赖答题数据,用语义分析简化心理量表。

Discovering Semantic Latent Structures in Psychological Scales: A Response-Free Pathway to Efficient Simplification

  • 用上下文嵌入+密度聚类挖掘量表项的潜在语义结构。
  • 平均缩短60.5%量表长度,仍保持良好信效度。
  • 适合需快速精简量表的研究者使用。

心理量表优化传统上依赖因子分析、项目反应理论等需大量答题数据的方法,但受限于数据规模和跨文化可比性。本文提出一种基于主题建模的语义结构发现框架,利用上下文句子嵌入编码量表项,通过密度聚类自动发现潜在语义因子,无需预设数量。基于类别词权重生成可解释的主题表示,实现语义相近聚类的合并。结合成员资格标准,在集成化流程中选出代表性题项。在DASS、IPIP和EPOCH三个量表上评估显示,该方法恢复了与既有构念一致的因子分组,平均缩减60.5%题项数量,同时保持良好的内部一致性、因子相似性和变量间相关性。结果表明,语义潜在结构可作为测量结构的无响应近似。我们还提供可视化工具,支持一键式语义分析与结构化简化。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Psychological scale refinement traditionally relies on response-based methods such as factor analysis, item response theory, and network psychometrics to optimize item composition. Although rigorous, these approaches require large samples and may be constrained by data availability and cross-cultural comparability. Recent advances in natural language processing suggest that the semantic structure of questionnaire items may encode latent construct organization, offering a complementary response-free perspective. We introduce a topic-modeling framework that operationalizes semantic latent structure for scale simplification. Items are encoded using contextual sentence embeddings and grouped via density-based clustering to discover latent semantic factors without predefining their number. Class-based term weighting derives interpretable topic representations that approximate constructs and enable merging of semantically adjacent clusters. Representative items are selected using membership criteria within an integrated reduction pipeline. We benchmarked the framework across DASS, IPIP, and EPOCH, evaluating structural recovery, internal consistency, factor congruence, correlation preservation, and reduction efficiency. The proposed method recovered coherent factor-like groupings aligned with established constructs. Selected items reduced scale length by 60.5% on average while maintaining psychometric adequacy. Simplified scales showed high concordance with original factor structures and preserved inter-factor correlations, indicating that semantic latent organization provides a response-free approximation of measurement structure. Our framework formalizes semantic structure as an inspectable front-end for scale construction and reduction. To facilitate adoption, we provide a visualization-supported tool enabling one-click semantic analysis and structured simplification.

心理量表语义分析无响应主题建模

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