1st Edition

Text Analysis for the Social Sciences Methods for Drawing Statistical Inferences From Texts and Transcripts

Edited By Carl W. Roberts Copyright 1997
    326 Pages
    by Routledge

    326 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book provides descriptions and illustrations of cutting-edge text analysis methods for communication and marketing research; cultural, historical-comparative, and event analysis; curriculum evaluation; psychological diagnosis; language development research; and for any research in which statistical inferences are drawn from samples of texts. Although the book is accessible to readers having no experience with content analysis, the text analysis expert will find substantial new material in its pages. In particular, this collection describes developments in semantic and network text analysis methodologies that heretofore have been accessible only among a smattering of methodology journals.

    The book's international and cross-disciplinary content illustrates the breadth of quantitative text analysis applications. These applications demonstrate the methods' utility for international research, as well as for practitioners from the fields of sociology, political science, journalism/communication, computer science, marketing, education, and English. This is an "ecumenical" collection that contains applications not only of the most recent semantic and network text analysis methods, but also of the more traditional thematic method of text analysis. In fact, it is originally with this volume that these two "relational" approaches to text analysis are defined and contrasted with more traditional "thematic" text analysis methods. The emphasis here is on application. The book's chapters provide guidance regarding the sorts of inferences that each method affords, and up-to-date descriptions of the human and technological resources required to apply the methods. Its purpose is as a resource for making quantitative text analysis methods more accessible to social science researchers.

    Contents: C.W. Roberts, Introduction. G. Shapiro, J.Markoff, A Matter of Definition. Part I:Methodologies. P.J. Stone, Thematic Text Analysis: New Agendas for Analyzing Text Context. C.W. Roberts, Semantic Text Analysis: On the Structure of Linguistic Ambiguity in Ordinary Discourse. K.M. Carley, Network Text Analysis: The Network Position of Concepts. Part II:Applications. W.A. Danielson, D.L. Lasorsa, Perceptions of Social Change: 100 Years of Front-Page Content in The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. L.A. Gottschalk, The Unobtrusive Measurement of Psychological States and Traits. R. Franzosi, Labor Unrest in the Italian Service Sector: An Application of Semantic Grammars. S. Savaiano, P.A. Schrodt, Environmental Change and Conflict: Analyzing the Ethiopian Famine of 1984-85. E.M. Eltinge, Assessing the Portrayal of Science as a Process of Inquiry in High School Biology Textbooks: An Application of Linguistic Content Analysis. M.E. Palmquist, K.M. Carley, T.A. Dale, Applications of Computer-Aided Text Analysis: Analyzing Literary and Nonliterary Texts. J. Kleinnijenhuis, J.A. de Ridder, E.M. Rietberg, Reasoning In Economic Discourse: An Application of the Network Approach to the Dutch Press. R. Popping, Computer Programs for the Analysis of Texts and Transcripts. Part III:Prospects. G. Shapiro, The Future of Coders: Human Judgments in a World of Sophisticated Software. R. Bechtel, Developments in Computer Science With Application to Text Analysis. A.L. Baker, Text Analysis and Natural Language Database Systems. C.W. Roberts, A Theoretical Map for Selecting Among Text Analysis Methods.

    Biography

    Carl W. Roberts