The Fuzziness of Verbal Response Scales:The STAI-T Questionnaire

Abstract

In this paper we used a two-step procedure for the numerical translation of verbal frequency expressions of the response scale of a questionnaire (STAI-T). In an empirical study, 70 participants estimated numerical equivalents for verbal frequency expressions, data was modeled, and fuzzy membership functions were calculated. Results show that the scale's visual arrangement does not influence the interpretation of the words' meanings. We argue that traditional statistics are inappropriate for the analysis of verbal response data and demonstrate the alternative of fuzzy analysis, providing an example.

Prolog-based agnostic explanation module for structured pattern classification

“…Thus, we implemented a conversational agent (chatbot) intending to enable users without knowledge of the Prolog language and syntax to interact with the knowledge base by running natural language queries. By doing that, we used the Rasa platform [6], which provides an open-source tool that can be used to build conversational virtual assistants. It allows for tight integration with the Python programming language, which is especially useful in our case, as the chatbot needs to interact with Prolog.…”