Successive Pile Sorting
Also known as: Hierarchical Pile Sort, Successive Sorting Task, Multi-Level Pile Sort, Successive Free Pile Sort
Successive pile sorting is an extension of the single-level pile sort in which informants first divide a set of items into a few broad piles and then repeatedly subdivide each pile into finer groupings (or, in the lumping variant, repeatedly merge piles into coarser ones). Recording the level at which any two items first become separated yields a graded similarity measure that captures the hierarchical structure of a cultural domain, not just a single flat partition.
Key highlights
- Captures graded, hierarchical similarity rather than the all-or-nothing co-occurrence of a single-level sort.
- Recovers folk-taxonomic depth, making it a natural companion to folk taxonomy and ethnoscience analysis.
- Uses the same low-literacy card-sorting interface that makes ordinary pile sorting accessible across cultures.
- Produces proximity data directly compatible with clustering and MDS used throughout cultural domain analysis.
Intuition
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How it works
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When to use it
Use successive pile sorting when you suspect a cultural domain has a layered, taxonomic structure — broad classes that subdivide into finer kinds — and you want to recover that hierarchy directly from informants rather than impose it. It is well suited to domains such as animals, plants, illnesses, or occupations where folk taxonomies are deep. It assumes informants can manage a moderately large item set and tolerate repeated sorting. It is less appropriate for very small item sets (where a single sort suffices), for purely dimensional domains with no nesting, or when informant fatigue is a serious risk.
Strengths & limitations
- Captures graded, hierarchical similarity rather than the all-or-nothing co-occurrence of a single-level sort.
- Recovers folk-taxonomic depth, making it a natural companion to folk taxonomy and ethnoscience analysis.
- Uses the same low-literacy card-sorting interface that makes ordinary pile sorting accessible across cultures.
- Produces proximity data directly compatible with clustering and MDS used throughout cultural domain analysis.
- Substantially more burdensome and time-consuming for informants than a single sort, limiting feasible item-set size.
- The depth-to-similarity scoring is a modeling choice; different weighting schemes can change the resulting structure.
- Like all pile sorts, it confounds different bases of similarity unless informants are probed about their criteria.
- Lumping and splitting variants can yield different structures, so the elicitation direction must be reported.
Common pitfalls
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Applications
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Frequently asked
How does successive sorting differ from a single pile sort?
A single pile sort records only whether two items end up in the same final pile, yielding binary co-occurrence. Successive sorting records the depth at which a pair is separated across repeated subdivisions, producing graded similarity that reflects hierarchical, taxonomic structure rather than a single flat partition.
Should I use the splitting or the lumping variant?
Splitting (top-down) starts from the whole set and is more natural for most informants and domains; lumping (bottom-up) starts from singletons and can surface fine distinctions first. They can yield different structures, so choose one, apply it consistently, and report which you used. Splitting is the more common default.
How is the proximity matrix scored?
Each pair receives a value reflecting the level at which the two items first fall into different piles: pairs separated at the first cut score low, pairs that remain together through deep subdivisions score high. These per-informant level scores are averaged across the sample to build the aggregate proximity matrix fed to clustering and MDS.
Sources
- 1.Weller, S. C., & Romney, A. K. (1988). Systematic Data Collection. Qualitative Research Methods Series 10. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.ISBN 9780803930742
- 2.Bernard, H. R. (2017). Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (6th ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.ISBN 9780759112421
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Cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Successive Pile Sorting. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/anthropology/successive-pile-sorting