Designing Social Research by Ian Greener

Author:Ian Greener [Greener, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Research, Methodology
ISBN: 9781849201902
Google: acbTdK-o8JAC
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Published: 2011-04-30T04:09:56+00:00

Starting Points in Quantitative Textual Analysis

Taking a quantitative approach to examining text or texts assumes that frequency is a relevant starting point for describing or analysing it or them. If one thing appears in the text more than another, then it is likely to be worthy of note, not necessarily with the most frequently occurring item being the most important, but begging the question of why some items appear more than others in the text and what this might mean.

When viewed in this way, quantitative analysis of textual data becomes a means of getting a different perspective or finding a starting point for analysis rather than trying to replace the necessity of reading the text carefully and trying to work out what is going on within it. If particular words or phrases occur or recur frequently within the text then a close reading is likely to pick that up, but it can still be a help to analyse a text to see exactly how often that these words or phrases appear, and whether there is a statistical difference between sections or texts in their usage, as this can help generate new insights into those texts. Computer software such as T-lab (http://www.tlab.it/en/default.php) not only allows researchers to examine texts in this way, but also to produce comparisons of how often particular terms appear in different sections of the text through techniques such as correspondence analysis, which produce tables of words that appear ‘over’ or ‘under’ used, so raising interesting questions about frequency that can help in interpreting texts. MAXQDA, already mentioned above, can also present word counts of key terms through the use of its MAXDictio add-in.

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