A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

It is clear from the dendrogram in Figure 5xiv above that the interpretation of
which clusters are formed is subjective. For example, groups could be formed
using the red line, which would create two clusters, C10, C11 and C9 forming
one group, and all other participants forming another. Similarly, the green line
could form yet another set of clusters. However, the groups indicated by the
blue line were chosen for this investigation since the closer a group is to zero,
the more similar the members of the group are, therefore, these groups suggest
more similar abilities and attributes than other group choices.
Table 5.32 below presents the five participant clusters that emerged from the
hierarchical cluster analysis using immediate recall scores (See Appendix 5.4a).
In the top row, the initial clusters formed by applying the immediate recall
learning scores of participants to the cluster analysis (representing the learning
ability of each participant) (See Appendix 5.4a). As can be seen in Table 5.32
there was only one participant (C1) in Cluster 1. She achieved the highest score
of all 12 main investigation participants. Cluster 2 contained participants C2 and
C3 as they achieved similar scores. Cluster 3 contained three participants (C4,
C5 and C6). Participants C7 and C8 formed Cluster 4 and the fifth cluster
contained C9, C10 and C11 who were the three lowest scoring participants. The
various other factors that were examined using cluster analysis are also
presented and the individual dendrograms for each factor are presented in
Appendix 5.4. In order to make comparisons, each member is presented in
Table 5.32 in the column of their respective immediate recall cluster (for
example, C1 is always presented in Cluster 1, C11 always in Cluster 5). The
objective of this analysis was to identify what factors participants who were
clustered together, as a result of similar learning levels (immediate recall
scores), also had in common, in order to ascertain if particular factors could be
attributed to be shown to impact upon participant learning ability.
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