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not produce objects that are prime examples of things that
are owned. Subjects involved in enterprises that produce
items more typical of owned things might have responded
differently. Second, the semantic method used in the study
necessarily constrained the responses of the subjects. As
individuals and as a group, the subjects may have more
information and knowledge about the semantics of ownership
that were not allowed expression by the method used in this
study.
Other qualifications are more specific. For example,
questionnaire studies are necessarily limited to, and biased
by, their wordings. Efforts were made in pilot studies to
eliminate or modify vague or unusual wordings, particularly
those involving the ownership criteria. However, with only
a label and a single sentence example expression to
represent a criterion, it appears in retrospect that some
wordings may have been vague, and, as a result, differences
between some criteria diminished. For example, for some
subjects, the criterion, Aesthetics: "I really like it.",
may have appeared synonymous with Desire: "I want it.",
since the verb "to like" is commonly used in requests, e.g.
"Td like some coffee."
Wordings of instructions may also have allowed
different interpretations. For example, the recall