To examine the validity of Bales' Interaction Process Analysis (IPA), a factor analysis was performed on existing data from two independent but similarly designed studies wherein the 12 IPA variables were observed and recorded as groups completed two different tasks. None of the four possible structures imputed to the IPA clearly emerged from the data. The results offer only partial support for collapsing the 12 response categories into four, or for treating the 12 response categories as pairwise opposites. One imputed category, negative social-emotional behavior, was confirmed.
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