ISA stands for Identity Structure Analysis. Your identity is the continuity of the structure to your judgements over the years. In other words, in getting to know people you begin to form opinions of them. These opinions can strengthen to become convictions, against which those people, and new people, and self, are judged.
ISA provides numerical parameters to analysis the nature of your convictions on selected themes, your judgements of specified aspects of self or of others, and your identification with others.
The answers are in the question
An ISA instrument takes the form of two lists: a list of convictions and a list of people. Technically, convictions (or characteristics or opinions or beliefs or values or traits…) are referred to as constructs. Technically, people (or groups or institutions or places or personified things…) are referred to as entities.
A good entity list comprises of both self and other (non-self) entities. The self-entities include entities that refer to the past, various contexts in the present, and aspirations for the future. The other-entities include entities that are likely to be judged positively (and admired person) and negatively (a disliked person).
A construct always comes with two poles: a favoured pole and a disfavoured pole. A pole of one construct may be favoured by the population as a whole. A pole of another construct may be favoured by a section of the population while the other pole is favoured by the rest of the population. A pole of a third construct may be favoured by an individual in one context while the other pole is favoured by the same individual but a different context. A good construct list will be made up of all three types of constructs: group favoured, individual favoured and context favoured.
Are you sitting comfortably?
When responding to an instrument a participant assigns each entity a place on the range that is delimited by the two poles of each construct. When all constructs have been attributed to all entities then the resulting grid of ratings can be analysed for the participants’ identity structure.
I think you’ll find
A construct has two poles: a favoured and a disfavoured part. Which pole is favoured is defined by the participant and not by the instrument. The first step of the analysis examines how the participant has attributed each construct to their aspirational self-entity. This analysis step results in each construct being assigned a polarity, hence tagging the favoured and disfavoured pole.
The next stage of analysis can now see how any entity has been scored across all the constructs. All the scores can be combined resulting in an overall evaluation, either positive or negative.
Now consider a construct where all positively evaluated entities have been attributed to the favoured pole, and all negatively evaluated entities have been attributed to the disfavoured pole. This construct has been used very consistently and therefore there is a strong conviction behind it. If some positively evaluated entities are attributed to the disfavoured pole and some negatively evaluated entities are attributed to the favoured pole, then the construct has been used inconsistently and there is little conviction behind it. The former construct can be said to be core, while the latter is conflicted.
The final stage of analysis compares two entities; one a self-entity and the other a non-self entity. When both entities have been attributed to the same poles of all the constructs then it can be said that there is a high degree of identification between self and the other. When one entity has been attributed to one pole of all the constructs and the other entity to the opposite pole then there is no identification between self and other.
In summary we have quickly walked through five of the ISA parameters: Polarity, Score, Evaluation, Structural Pressure and Identification.
