The basic non-metric scaling routine MINISSA takes as input a matrix of standardised joint frequencies which is generated by HAMLET joint frequencies. Its metric counterpart is MRSCAL, which can also be selected if preferred.
It is possible to repeat scaling for different combinations of items included in the original word list used by HAMLET without the need to generate the matrix each time.
You can request non-metric multidimensional scaling in two or three dimensions. In addition to the standard MDS procedure assigning equal weight to the contributions of the distances between all pairs of points in minimizing stress, there is also an option to apply the non-linear weighting scheme proposed by J.W.Sammon (1969) where these are weighted in inverse relation to their initial values when calculating the loss function. This assigns greater importance to items with closer connections in the overall configuration and less to those which are more marginal.
The resulting configuration is automatically displayed in graphic form : the first two reference axes appear as a horizontal plane on to which labelled points are projected corresponding to words in the text file originally subject to analysis. The configuration can be rotated and zoomed for closer examination, printed or saved for inclusion in other documents. Note that, for easier viewing, configurations are rescaled in these displays by their largest absolute coordinate value.
You can examine and edit the file containing the detailed configuration data on which the display is based.
The results of applying the same vocabulary to a series of different texts can be saved for separate comparison using Procrustean Individual Differences Scaling (PINDIS) . For this purpose, the results of each MDS scaling must first have been saved. PINDIS has an option to call SELECT to choose the configurations to be compared. SELECT can also be used independently to create an input file for PINDIS. If the matrices created for a series of texts have been saved, it is also possible to compare these, using a version of INDividual differences SCALing (INDSCAL).