Measuring the Effects of a Liberal Arts Education on the Perception of Poetry

Ten poems of relatively obscure origin dealing with the relationship of a poet to his mistress were read and scored for perceived similarity by freshmen and senior engineering and literature majors. The resulting similarity matrices were analyzed using Carroll and Chang’s (1970) INDSCAL. The structure of the poetry is discussed as are the relative positions of the four subject groups in the person space. Implications of the methodology are discussed with respect to educational evaluation.