User Instructions

Below is a brief overview of Automated Integrative Complexity.

Documents or Paragraphs?
There are two principle ways to run material through AutoIC:

By Document
By Paragraph

AutoIC for Documents

AutoIC for documents takes a complete user provided document and codes the entire thing. It does this by breaking the document into optimal 75-word chunks of text. If you have multiple documents, or large pieces of text, you should use the Document version. Please note that the system, because of its multi-pass process, will slow down tremendously with large zipped batches. A .5MB zipped document will take a couple of hours to process. We recommend zipping larger projects into batches of about this size.

AutoIC for Paragraphs

AutoIC for Paragraphs scores whole paragraphs without breaking them up. The primary purpose we had in mind for the Paragraph version was an easy way to score participant responses in laboratory settings. You should only use the paragraph format for relatively short segments. This system is designed to score things in a paragraph-by-paragraph format. Please note: The file will stop coding when it reaches the first blank field in Column 4.

Why Documents or Paragraphs?
If you have a document that is, say, 2000 words long, and you use the Paragraph analysis, it will likely assign it a very high score; the Paragraph version was designed for shorter, paragraph-length responses. There is a well know ‘length effect’ when coding Integrative Complexity. Using the Document version of the system avoids this problem. Of course, you are free to use either as long as you meet the terms of use. The only thing that is different is the unit of scoring – that is, how it decides which words to score. See the Automated Integrative Complexity Manual for more details.

Variables on the PARAGRAPH SHEET:

Document = name of document from which chunk was scored
Chunk = chunk number within document; always listed sequentially (so 1 = first chunk in document, 2 = second, and so forth)
Complete? = did the chunk include a full 75 words (=1), or not (=0). Every chunk will include 75 words except for the last chunk in a document. AutoIC scores the last chunk, but this variable allows researchers to select out those “incomplete” chunks easily and do analyses without them should they choose to do so. There are pros and cons to both approaches: (1) If you don’t remove them, you have chunks in your data that are not standard length; (2) but if you do remove them, you systematically lose the end of all documents. (In most datasets, it will make little or no difference; more on this when we discuss the document-level variables). On balance, though, our advice is to remove the incomplete chunks. On average, they are just adding unnecessary noise in terms of paragraphs with differing word lengths. And you’re still going to be scoring the vast majority of the words in most cases anyway. If it looks like you are not (see DOCUMENT SHEET below), then you should just do it both ways (look at your data with and without incomplete chunks). If you do, you’ll almost certainly see what I’m telling you here: It just doesn’t matter.
Paragraph = the actual paragraph that was scored, devoid of punctuation.
Words = number of words in the paragraph; it’s always 75 except for the last chunk in each document.
IC = integrative complexity score for that chunk.
DIAL = dialectical complexity score for that chunk.
ELAB = elaborative complexity score for that chunk.
IC_Differentiation = Integrative complexity score that was the result of differentiation. Note that, to keep differentiation and integration on the same scale, neither of them starts from 1 (they both start from zero). The IC scale itself starts from 1. I point this out only so that you will realize that IC_Differentiation + IC_Integration does NOT = IC. Rather, you have to add one to that score to get the IC score. This is just to keep the differentiation and integration scores on the same scale.
IC_Integration = Integrative complexity score that was the result of integration. See note for IC_Differentiation about the scale. This is also true for all the differentiation and integration variables below; we’re just going to stop saying that.
DIAL_Differentiation = Dialectical complexity score that was the result of differentiation.
DIAL_Integration = Dialectical complexity score that was the result of integration. See note for IC-Integration above.
ELAB_Differentiation = Elaborative complexity score that was the result of differentiation.
ELAB_Integration = Elaborative complexity score that was the result of integration. See note for IC-Integration above.
ELAB = elaborative complexity score for that chunk.
IC_Differentiation = Integrative complexity score that was the result of differentiation. Note that, to keep differentiation and integration on the same scale, neither of them starts from 1 (they both start from zero). The IC scale itself starts from 1. I point this out only so that you will realize that IC_Differentiation + IC_Integration does NOT = IC. Rather, you have to add one to that score to get the IC score. This is just to keep the differentiation and integration scores on the same scale.
IC_Integration = Integrative complexity score that was the result of integration. See note for IC_Differentiation about the scale. This is also true for all the differentiation and integration variables below; we’re just going to stop saying that.
DIAL_Differentiation = Dialectical complexity score that was the result of differentiation.
DIAL_Integration = Dialectical complexity score that was the result of integration. See note for IC-Integration above.
ELAB_Differentiation = Elaborative complexity score that was the result of differentiation.
ELAB_Integration = Elaborative complexity score that was the result of integration. See note for IC-Integration above.

Variables on the DOCUMENT SHEET:

Document = name of document.
Num Complete Chunks = number of complete chunks in the document.
Num Words in Complete Chunks = Total number of words in the document, minus the incomplete chunks.
Percentage of Words Scored = This variable is only relevant to the main set of IC variables (which remove incomplete chunks). For those main IC variables, this tells you, out of all the words in the document, what percentage was actually scored (this will be all of the words except for incomplete chunks). Unless you have really short documents, this figure is going to be above 90%, and usually will hover above 95%.

The next set of variables parallels those for the paragraph sheet, only it removes incomplete chunks. This is the set we recommend using for the typical data set:

IC = average integrative complexity score for the document, excluding incomplete chunks .
DIAL = average dialectical complexity score for the document, excluding incomplete chunks.
ELAB = average elaborative complexity score for the document excluding incomplete chunks.
IC_Differentiation = average level of IC differentiation for that document (please see notes on integration/differentiation for paragraph sheet), excluding incomplete chunks.
IC_Integration = average level of IC integration for that document (please see notes on integration/differentiation for paragraph sheet), excluding incomplete chunks.
DIAL_Differentiation = average level of DIAL differentiation for that document (please see notes on integration/differentiation for paragraph sheet), excluding incomplete chunks.
DIAL_Integration = average level of DIAL integration for that document (please see notes on integration/differentiation for paragraph sheet), excluding incomplete chunks.
ELAB_Differentiation = average level of ELAB differentiation for that document (please see notes on integration/differentiation for paragraph sheet), excluding incomplete chunks.
ELAB_Integration = average level of ELAB integration for that document (please see notes on integration/differentiation for paragraph sheet), excluding incomplete chunks.

The next set of variables parallels those for the paragraph sheet, only it KEEPS incomplete chunks:

Num All Chunks = Total number of words in the document, including the incomplete chunks.
Mean Words in Chunk = average number of words in the chunk; again, if it drifts far below 70, this suggests a higher percentage of your paragraphs are below the 75 marker.
IC_AllChunks = average integrative complexity score for the document, including incomplete chunks.
DIAL_AllChunks = average dialectical complexity score for the document, including incomplete chunks.
ELAB_AllChunks = average elaborative complexity score for the document, including incomplete chunks.
DIAL_AllChunks = average dialectical complexity score for the document, including incomplete chunks.
ELAB_AllChunks = average elaborative complexity score for the document, including incomplete chunks.
IC_Differentiation_AllChunks = average level of differentiation for that document (please see notes on integration/differentiation for paragraph sheet), including incomplete chunks.
IC_Integration_AllChunks = average level of integration for that document (please see notes on integration/differentiation for paragraph sheet), including incomplete chunks.
DIAL_Differentiation_AllChunks = average level of dialectical differentiation for that document (please see notes on integration/differentiation for paragraph sheet), including incomplete chunks.
DIAL_Integration_AllChunks = average level of dialectical integration for that document (please see notes on integration/differentiation for paragraph sheet), including incomplete chunks.
ELAB_Differentiation_AllChunks = average level of elaborative differentiation for that document (please see notes on integration/differentiation for paragraph sheet), including incomplete chunks.
ELAB_Integration_AllChunks = average level of elaborative integration for that document (please see notes on integration/differentiation for paragraph sheet), including incomplete chunks.

Each user of the system confirms that they have the necessary legal permissions in place for material sent through the system.