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CONTENT Publication Alerts and CONTENT Bibliographies

CONTENT Publication Alert (CPA) is a service provided to members of
CONTENT, an Internet mailing list
for the discussion of content analysis.

To subscribe to CONTENT, send the command "subscribe
CONTENT" (without the quotation marks) in the body of
an e-mail message to listserv@bama.ua.edu.
To contact the listowner, write Bill Evans at wevans@ua.edu.

(from a message of the listowner:)

CPA provides timely summaries of new publications on
content analysis. CPA covers only publications that focus on content
analysis theory and methods; CPA does not include publications that
merely apply content analysis, unless these publications also offer
substantial discussion of, or innovation in, content analysis methods
or theory.

Bibliographies of recent publications that apply or discuss content
analysis have been distributed to CONTENT members:

CONTENT Bibliographies

CONTENT Publication Alerts

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

Coding eyewitness narratives

Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2001 15:18:40 -0500 (EST)
From: William Evans <jouwee@panther.Gsu.EDU>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

Dickinson, Jason J., and Debra A. Poole. "Efficient Coding of
   Eyewitness Narratives: A Comparison of Syntactic Unit and
   Word Count Procedures." Behavior Research Methods,
   Instruments, & Computers 32, no. 4 (2000): 537-545.

The authors review several procedures for coding eyewitness
narratives, many of which are time and labor intensive. The
authors develop word count procedures and apply these procedures
to transcripts of eyewitness testimony. The authors report that
word count procedures produce reliable results that are very
similar to the results produced by more complex coding
procedures.

Human vs. machine indexing

Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 12:01:57 -0500 (EST)
From: William Evans <jouwee@panther.Gsu.EDU>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

Anderson, James D., and Jose Perez-Carballo. "The Nature of
   Indexing: How Humans and Machines Analyze Messages and Texts
   for Retrieval. Part I: Research, and the Nature of Human
   Indexing." Information Processing and Management 37, no. 2
   (2001): 231-254.

Anderson, James D., and Jose Perez-Carballo. "The Nature of
   Indexing: How Humans and Machines Analyze Messages and Texts
   for Retrieval. Part II: Machine Indexing, and the Allocation
   of Human Versus Machine Effort." Information Processing and
   Management 37, no. 2 (2001): 255-277.

The authors compare various approaches to indexing, considering
the most appropriate role for human and machine indexing across
various types of indexing tasks. Not surprisingly, the authors
forecast that indexing and abstracting services will continue to
reduce their reliance on human indexers. Accordingly, the authors
are especially concerned to identify the indexing tasks that still
seem to require human indexing. Along the way, the authors
provide a rather thorough review of the literature regarding how
humans perform when asked to code, index, or summarize texts.

Coding marital interaction

Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 14:08:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: William Evans <jouwee@panther.Gsu.EDU>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

Heyman, Richard E., Bushra R. Chaudhry, Dominique Treboux,
   Judith Crowell, Chiyoko Lord, Dina Vivian, and Everett B.
   Waters. "How Much Observational Data is Enough? An Empirical
   Test Using Marital Interaction Coding." Behavior Therapy 32,
   no. 1 (2001): 107-122.

The authors attempt to determine the minimum length of videotape
segments required to apply the Rapid Marital Interaction Coding
System (RMICS). The authors report that for most types of couples
and for most RMICS variables a segment length of 15 minutes is
adequate to obtain high levels of interrater reliability.

Edited volume on computerized text analysis

Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 16:13:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: William Evans <jouwee@panther.Gsu.EDU>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

West, Mark D., ed. Theory, Method, and Practice in Computer
   Content Analysis. Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing, 2001.

Ten chapters are included in this volume:

   "In Praise of Dumb Clerks, by Robert Stevenson
   "Historical Foundations of Computer-Assisted Content
      Analysis," by Donald L. Diefenbach
   "Redeveloping DICTION: Theoretical Considerations," by
      Roderick P. Hart
   "Frame Mapping: A Quantitative Method for Investigating Issues
      in the Public Sphere," by M. Mark Miller and Bonnie Parnell
      Reichert
   "Toward a Typology and Theoretical Grounding for Computer
      Content Analysis," by Mark D. West and Linda K. Fuller
   "Computer Content Analysis and Manual Coding Techniques: A
      Comparative Analysis," by Alf Linderman
   "Pre-Assessment of Scale Reliability: A Computer Content
      Analysis Approach," by Donald G. McTavish
   "Probabilistic Classifiers for Tracking Point-of-View," by J.
      M. Wiebe and R. F. Bruce
   "New Methods of Content Analysis in Education, Evaluation, and
      Psychology," by Herbert J. Walberg, Gretchen W. Arian,
      Susan J. Paik, and John Miller
   "The Future of Computer Content Analysis: Trends, Unexplored
      Lands, and Speculations," by Mark D. West

Coding engine

Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 08:28:06 -0400 (EDT)
From: William Evans <jouwee@panther.Gsu.EDU>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

Perrin, Andrew J. "The CodeRead System: Using Natural Language
   Processing to Automate Coding of Qualitative Data."
   Social Science Computer Review 19, no. 2 (2001): 213-220.

The author has created CodeRead, a set of Perl modules that
generate coding rules from samples of manually-coded texts. Users
code a subsample of text using the CodeRead protocol. CodeRead
then generates rules implicit in this coding and automatically
codes the remainder of the sample. For more information, visit
the CodeRead web site.

Electronic texts in the humanities

Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 16:39:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: William Evans <jouwee@panther.Gsu.EDU>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

Hockey, Susan M. Electronic Texts in the Humanities: Principles
   and Practice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

This book reviews the use of computers to support literary
analysis. Topics covered include text analysis software,
authorship attribution, and word class tagging. The Preface and
Chapter 1 are available online.

Edited volume on computerized content analysis

Date: Fri, 01 Jun 2001 14:52:14 -0400 (EDT)
From: William Evans <jouwee@panther.Gsu.EDU>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

West, Mark. D., ed. Applications of Computer Content Analysis.
   Westport, CT: Ablex, 2001. 

Ten chapters are included in this volume: 

   "Applied Text Theory: Quantitative Analysis of Answers to
       Open-Ended Questions," by Peter Mohler and Cornelia Zuell
   "Building WorldView(s) with Profiler+," by Michael D. Young
   "Intersubjective Semantic Meanings Emergent in a Work Group: A
       Neural Network Content Analysis of Voice Mail," by John C.
       Sherblom, N. L. Reinsch, Jr., and Raymond W. Beswick
   "Using the Computer to Identify Unknown Authors," by James W.
       Tankard, Jr.
   "Using Neural Networks to Assess Corporate Image," by Joseph G.
       T. Salisbury
   "Linking Gender Language in News About Presidential Candidates
       to Gender Gaps in Politics: A Time-Series Analysis of the
       1996 Campaign," by James A. Danowski and Rebecca Ann Lind
   "Semi-Automated Content Analysis of Pharmacist-Patient
       Interactions Using the Theme Machine Document-Clustering
       System," by Bruce L. Lambert
   "Monitoring the Social Environment Using Computer Content
       Analysis of Online News Media Text: An Example in Natural
       Resources," by David N. Bengston and David P. Fan
   "Computing and Human Coding of German Text on Attacks on
       Foreigners," by David P. Fan, Hans-Bernd Brosius, and Frank
       Esser
   "Media Monitoring Using CETA: The Stock-Exchange Launches of
       KPN and WOL," by Jan A. de Ridder and Jan Kleinnijenhuis

Additional information is available at the Ablex Books web site.

Interpretive and reception-based content analysis

Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 11:38:05 -0400 (EDT)
From: William Evans <jouwee@panther.Gsu.EDU>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

Ahuvia, Aaron. "Traditional, Interpretive, and Reception Based
   Content Analysis: Improving the Ability of Content Analysis to
   Address Issues of Pragmatic and Theoretical Concern." Social
   Indicators Research 54, no. 2 (2001): 139-172.

The author recommends two new approaches to content analysis:
interpretive content analysis and reception-based content
analysis. In interpretive content analysis, coders work
collaboratively to arrive at the most compelling interpretation of
the content being studied. This approach substitutes public
justifiability for intercoder reliability. In reception-based
content analysis, coders who are similar to consumers of the
content being studied report their own subjective interpretations
of the content. The researcher then uses coder agreements and
disagreements as data with which to document how the content is
likely to be interpreted by its consumers.

Proxy measures of article content

Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:57:24 -0400 (EDT)
From: William Evans <jouwee@panther.Gsu.EDU>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

Althaus, Scott L., Jill A. Edy, and Patricia F. Phalen. "Using
   Substitutes for Full-Text News Stories in Content Analysis:
   Which Text Is Best?" American Journal of Political Science
   45, no. 3 (2001): 707-724.

Can researchers rely on headlines, lead paragraphs, and New York
Times Index entries as proxy measures for the full text of
articles that appear in the New York Times? The authors report
that headlines and lead paragraphs provide valid proxy measures
of article content, but only at relatively high levels of
aggregation (e.g., determining which sources were most frequently
mentioned in articles). The authors report that New York Times
Index subject headings vary somewhat from year to year and that
classification practices seem somewhat inconsistent. The authors
suggest that researchers who use the Index be wary of these
limitations and perhaps report in their manuscripts the Index
subject headings they used to locate relevant stories.

AQUAD manual online, in 3 languages

Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:16:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: William Evans <jouwee@panther.Gsu.EDU>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

The 1999 publication "Analysis of Qualitative Data with AQUAD
Five" is now available online. Written by AQUAD developer
Gunter L. Huber, this 144-page publication focuses on AQUAD,
of course, but it also provides an overview of research design
and coding techniques for qualitative text analysis. Moreover,
the publication is available in English, German, and Spanish.

The English version is available at 

       http://www.aquad.de/eng/manual.pdf

The German version is available at 

       http://www.aquad.de/ger/manual.pdf

The Spanish version is available at 

       http://www.aquad.de/spa/manual.pdf

My thanks to CONTENT member Tiberio Feliz for bringing this
to our attention.

Video annotation system

Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 15:54:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: William Evans <jouwee@panther.Gsu.EDU>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

De Clercq, Armand, Ann Buysse, Herbert Roeyers, William Ickes,
   Koen Ponnet, and Lesley Verhofstadt. "VIDANN: A Video
   Annotation System." Behavior Research Methods, Instruments,
   & Computers 33, no. 2 (2001): 159-166.

The authors have developed a computer program that allows users
to annotate videotape via a writing tablet. Users can pause the
videotape using a button on the writing tablet. Users can then
enter handwritten notes, which are stored in the computer and
linked to the videotape segment. This system is designed to
facilitate video annotation by users who may lack the
technological skills required to use video decks or to master a
computer interface. VIDANN is available free of cost, at
http://twiprof1.rug.ac.be/VIDANN.

Four new articles

Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 12:58:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: William Evans <jouwee@panther.Gsu.EDU>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

Four new articles are notable in that they employ
computer-supported techniques and rather sophisticated
statistical analyses. The titles would seem to be descriptive
enough, so I am omitting summaries of these articles.

Bengston, David N., George Xu, and David P. Fan. "Attitudes
   Toward Ecosystem Management in the United States, 1992-1998."
   Society and Natural Resources 14, no. 6 (2001): 471-487.

Holmes, David I., Michael Robertson, and Roxanna Paez. "Stephen
   Crane and the New-York Tribune: A Case Study in Traditional
   and Non-Traditional Authorship Attribution." Computers and
   the Humanities 35, no. 3 (2001): 315-331.

Pollmann, Thijs, and R. Harald Baayen. "Computing Historical
   Consciousness: A Quantitative Inquiry into the Presence of the
   Past in Newspaper Texts." Computers and the Humanities 35,
   no. 3 (2001): 237-253.

Whissell, Cynthia, and Lee Sigelman. "The Times and the Man as
   Predictors of Emotion and Style in the Inaugural Addresses of
   U.S. Presidents." Computers and the Humanities 35, no. 3
   (2001): 255-272.

Word frequency distributions

Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 16:04:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: William Evans <jouwee@panther.Gsu.EDU>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

Baayen, R. Harald. Word Frequency Distributions. Dordrecht:
   Kluwer Academic, 2001.

From the publisher's promotional materials:

   This book is a comprehensive introduction to the statistical
   analysis of word frequency distributions, intended for
   computational linguists, corpus linguists, psycholinguists,
   and researchers in the field of quantitative stylistics. Word
   frequency distributions are characterized by very large
   numbers of rare words. This property leads to strange
   phenomena such as mean frequencies that systematically change
   as the number of observations is increased, relative
   frequencies that even in large samples are not fully reliable
   estimators of population probabilities, and model parameters
   that vary with text or corpus size. Special statistical
   techniques for the analysis of distributions with large
   numbers of rare events can be found in various technical
   journals. The aim of this book is to make these techniques
   more accessible for non-specialists, both theoretically, by
   means of a careful introduction to the underlying
   probabilistic and statistical concepts, and practically, by
   providing a program library implementing the main models for
   word frequency distributions.

This book includes a CD-ROM with software and data sets to
support hands-on statistical analysis of word frequency
distributions.

Weighted analyis; video-audio correspondence

Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 11:11:13 -0400 (EDT)
From: William Evans <jouwee@panther.Gsu.EDU>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

Prior, Markus. "Weighted Content Analysis of Political
   Advertisements." Political Communication 18, no. 3 (2001):
   335-345.

Many content analyses of televised political ads rely on archive
collections of advertisements, the author notes. Unfortunately,
such samples do not account for the number of times an ad was
broadcast or the number of viewers who were exposed to it. The
author offers techniques for weighting samples of political ads
to account for the number of times an ad was broadcast and the
number of viewers who saw it. The author also discusses how
researchers can find the information needed to estimate how
frequently an ad was broadcast and to how many viewers.

Walma van der Molen, Juliette H. "Assessing Text-Picture
   Correspondence in Television News: The Development of a New
   Coding Scheme." Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media
   45, no. 3 (2001): 483-498.

The author has designed a procedure to assess the extent to which
video and audio correspond in television news stories. The
correspondence between video and audio is coded as direct,
indirect, or divergent. The author applies this coding procedure
to television newscasts, including newscasts targeted to child
audiences. Direct correspondence was more common in children's
news than in news targeted to adults. The author discusses the
role of video-audio correspondence in viewer learning and recall.

Content analysis guidebook

Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2002 18:25:26 -0500 (EST)
From: William Evans <jouwee@panther.Gsu.EDU>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

Neuendorf, Kimberly A. The Content Analysis Guidebook. Thousand
   Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002.

This textbook provides practical, step-by-step advice on
conducting a content analysis. It also covers the history of
content analysis, software for content analysis, and online
resources for content analysis. The textbook is distributed with
PRAM, software that assists users in calculating intercoder
reliability. An extensive web site has been developed to support
users of this textbook: 

   http://academic.csuohio.edu/kneuendorf/content

Analysis of magazine covers

Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 12:35:56 -0500 (EST)
From: William Evans <jouwee@panther.Gsu.EDU>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

Bell, Phillip. "Semiotics and the Content Analysis of Visual
   Images." Journal of Information, Communication, and Library
   Science 7, no. 4 (2001): 81-100.

A primer of sorts that discusses how content analysis can be
applied in studies of visual images. As an example, the author
analyzes covers of Cleo, an Australian women's magazine, over
a 25-year period.

Computerized analysis of rhetorical styles

Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 16:57:08 -0500 (EST)
From: William Evans <jouwee@panther.Gsu.EDU>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

Kabanoff, Boris, Wayne Murphy, Shane Brown, and Denise Conroy.
   "The DICTION of Howard and Beazley." Australian Journal of
   Communication 28, no. 3 (2001): 85-103.

The authors employ content analysis software Diction to assess
the themes and rhetorical styles used by Australian political
leaders in speeches delivered at party conferences. The leaders
differ from one another (and from benchmark data provided by
Diction) in their use of words related to self-reference,
tenacity, inspiration, and other themes assessed by Diction.
The authors note that "The DICTION program provides efficient
empirical opportunities for mapping the rhetoric of business and
civic leaders."

InfoTrend method and public attitudes

Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 19:03:51 -0500 (EST)
From: William Evans <jouwee@panther.Gsu.EDU>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

Bengston, David N., and David P. Fan. "Trends in Attitudes
   Toward the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program on the
   National Forests: A Computer Content Analysis Approach."
   Journal of Park and Recreation Administration 19, no. 4
   (2001): 1-21.

Applying the InfoTrend computer-supported content analysis
method developed by Fan, the authors analyzed more than 4,000
news stories that mentioned the Recreational Fee Demonstration
Program (RFDP), a program that allows U.S. federal agencies to
introduce or increase fees at recreation sites. The RFDP
received mostly favorable coverage, the authors report. The
authors claim that by analyzing a large number of news stories
using the InfoTrend method one can quickly and efficiently
estimate public attitudes regarding a variety of social issues.

Sampling newspaper content

Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2002 13:07:37 -0400
From: William Evans <jouwee@langate.gsu.edu>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

Lacy, Stephen, Daniel Riffe, Staci Stoddard, Hugh Martin, and Kuang-Kuo
Chang. "Sample Size for Newspaper Content Analysis in Multi-Year
Studies." Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 78, no. 4 (2001):
836-845.

From the abstract for this article: "This study examines the most
efficient method of sampling content from five years of daily newspaper
editions. Selecting nine constructed weeks (nine issues from a Monday,
nine from a Tuesday, etc.) from five years is more efficient than the
ten constructed weeks - two from each year - suggested by previous
research. This rule holds provided the variables being measured do
not have large variances."

Coding political manifestos

Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 12:37:20 -0400
From: William Evans <jouwee@langate.gsu.edu>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

Pennings, Paul, and Hans Keman. "Towards a New Methodology of Estimating
Party Policy Positions." Quality & Quantity 36, no. 1 (2002): 55-79.

The authors provide an overview of the Comparative Manifestos Project,
which has developed a coding scheme for analysis of political manifestos.
The authors review in detail several studies related to this Project. They
also discuss how Project participants are planning to use computerized
text analysis to facilitate their research.

Expository text analysis; artificial intelligence techniques

Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 13:15:31 -0400
From: William Evans <jouwee@langate.gsu.edu>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

Evans, William. "Computer Environments for Content Analysis: Reconceptualizing
the Roles of Humans and Computers." In Computing in the Social
Sciences and Humanities, ed. Orville Vernon Burton, 67-83. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 2002.

      The author (who is also moderator of this CONTENT mailing list)
discusses the evolution of computerized text analysis tools, a discussion
that touches on the emerging use of artificial intelligence techniques in
content analysis.

Vidal-Abarca, Eduardo, Héctor Reyes, Ramiro Gilabert, Javier Calpe,
Emilio Soria, and Arthur C. Graesser. "ETAT: Expository Text Analysis
Tool." Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers 34, no. 1
(2002): 93-107.

      The authors have developed ETAT, software that identifies and maps
conceptual graph structures implicit in expository texts. ETAT (which was
written in Java) enables researchers to discover and visualize the number,
complexity, and interrelationships of concepts employed by writers.

Teaching content analysis

Date: Wed, 03 Jul 2002 13:31:28 -0400
From: William Evans <jouwee@langate.gsu.edu>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

Rajecki, D. W. "Personal Ad Content Analysis Teaches Statistical
Applications." Teaching of Psychology 29, no. 2 (2002): 119-122

The author describes a class project in which undergraduates analyzed
newspaper personal advertisements. In doing so, the students used ANOVA
and correlation techniques. Students reported the assignment to be
enjoyable and manifested increased mastery of relevant statistical
concepts.

Analyzing online communication

Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 19:16:46 -0400
From: William Evans <jouwee@langate.gsu.edu>
To: content@sphinx.Gsu.EDU

Rössler, Patrick. "Content Analysis in Online Communication: A Challenge
for Traditional Methodology." In Online Social Sciences, eds. Bernard
Batinic, Ulf-Dietrich Reips, and Michael Bosnjak, 291-307. Seattle, Wash.:
Hogrefe & Huber, 2002.

The author considers the challenges inherent in content analysis of online
and interactive communication. For example, online communication often
simultaneously employs multiple modalities (e.g., text, audio, and video)
and may include important interactive and design features as well as
content features, the author notes. The author offers advice regarding the
design and implementation of coding procedures that assess the distinctive
features of online communication.

Computerized analysis of Napoleon’s writings

Date: Fri, 04 Oct 2002 12:04:16 -0500
From: William Evans <evans@CCM.UA.EDU>
To: CONTENT@BAMA.UA.EDU

Gottschalk, Louis A., Don DeFrancisco, and Robert J. Bechtel. "Computerized
Content Analysis of Some Adolescent Writings of Napoleon Bonaparte: A Test
of the Validity of the Method." Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 190,
no. 8 (2002): 542-548.

Three passages written by Napoleon when he was between 12 and 16 years of
age were assessed using the authors' PCAD 2000 software, which implements
Gottschalk-Gleser analysis of verbal behavior. One or more of Napoleon's
writings manifested elevated scores on scales for on depression, anxiety,
and preoccupation with sickness. These findings coincide with the available
biographical evidence regarding Napoleon's childhood. The authors note that
their approach and their software would seem to be useful in psychohistorical
research.

Using Vanderbilt abstracts

Date: Wed, 09 Oct 2002 14:02:44 -0500
From: William Evans <evans@CCM.UA.EDU>
To: CONTENT@BAMA.UA.EDU

Althaus, Scott L., Jill A. Edy, and Patricia F. Phalen. "Using the
Vanderbilt Television Abstracts to Track Broadcast News Content:
Possibilities and Pitfalls." Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic
Media 46, no. 3 (2002): 473-492.

Many researchers have relied on abstracts provided by the Vanderbilt
Television News Archive to assess television news content, using these
abstracts instead of examining transcripts or videotapes. Althaus et al.
consider the possible pitfalls of this approach, providing data regarding
the consistency and information density of the Vanderbilt abstracts. Althaus
et al. conclude that these "abstracts can reflect important elements of news
when used at high levels of aggregation but may be unreliable as substitutes
for news content" (p. 473).

Transitivity index and DICTION scores

Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 17:11:48 -0500
From: William Evans <evans@CCM.UA.EDU>
To: CONTENT@BAMA.UA.EDU

Sydserff, Robin, and Pauline Weetman. "Developments in Content Analysis: A
Transitivity Index and DICTION Scores." Accounting Auditing and
Accountability Journal 15, no. 4 (2002): 523-545.

Sydserff and Weetman develop a transitivity index that indicates the extent
to which a text employs passive rather than active voice. They use the
transitivity index along with readability scores and scores generated by
DICTION software (which assesses texts in terms of verbal style or tone) to
analyze annual reports of investment trust companies, hoping to determine
which text features are associated with high- and low-performing companies.
The data are not entirely conclusive, but reports from low-performing
companies are more likely than reports from high-performing companies to use
passive voice and employ difficult-to-read text. Sydserff and Weetman
conclude that this approach, in which several computer-supported text
analysis techniques are applied, shows great promise in studies of
accounting narratives.

Content analysis in nutrition education

Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 15:00:02 -0600
From: William Evans <evans@CCM.UA.EDU>
To: CONTENT@BAMA.UA.EDU

Kondracki, Nancy L., Nancy S. Wellman, and Daniel R. Amundson. "Content
Analysis: Review of Methods and Their Applications in Nutrition Education."
Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 34, no. 4 (2002): 234-230.

The authors review applications of content analysis in nutrition education,
provide an overview of methodological issues and options, and discuss the
use of manual and computerized coding procedures.

Assessing and reporting intercoder reliability

Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 10:45:49 -0600
From: William Evans <evans@CCM.UA.EDU>
To: CONTENT@BAMA.UA.EDU

Lombard, Matthew, Jennifer Snyder-Duch, and Cheryl Campanella Bracken.
"Content Analysis in Mass Communication: Assessing and Reporting Intercoder
Reliability." Human Communication Research 28, no. 4 (2002): 587-604.

From the abstract for this article:

"[T]here are few standard and accessible guidelines available regarding the
appropriate procedures to use to assess and report intercoder reliability,
or software tools to calculate it. As a result, it seems likely that there
is little consistency in how this critical element of content analysis is
assessed and reported in published mass communication studies. Following a
review of relevant concepts, indices, and tools, a content analysis of 200
studies utilizing content analysis published in the communication literature
between 1994 and 1998 is used to characterize practices in the field. The
results demonstrate that mass communication researchers often fail to assess
(or at least report) intercoder reliability and often rely on percent
agreement, an overly liberal index. Based on the review and these results,
concrete guidelines are offered regarding procedures for assessment and
reporting of this important aspect of content analysis."

Dream content analysis

Date: Thu, 02 Jan 2003 14:04:53 -0600
From: William Evans <evans@CCM.UA.EDU>
To: CONTENT@BAMA.UA.EDU

Domhoff, G. William. The Scientific Study of Dreams: Neural Networks,
Cognitive Development, and Content Analysis. Washington, DC: American
Psychological Association, 2002.

Domhoff reviews the literature regarding dream content analysis and
considers relevant theoretical and methodological issues. A sample chapter
is available online, at http://www.apa.org/books/431688A.html (this chapter
includes rather substantial discussion of dream content analysis, but
references for the many cited publications are omitted from this online
sample).

Handbook of computational linguistics

Date: Thu, 02 Jan 2003 14:04:53 -0600
From: William Evans <evans@CCM.UA.EDU>
To: CONTENT@BAMA.UA.EDU

Mitkov, Ruslan, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Computational Linguistics.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

The thirty-eight chapters in this reference volume cover topics such as
word sense disambiguation, part-of-speech tagging, text summarization, and
text data mining. The table of contents is available online at
http://www.oup.co.uk/isbn/0-19-823882-7 and
http://www.oup-usa.org/isbn/0198238827.html (the former is the publisher's
United Kingdom site; the later is the U.S. site).

Pronouns and physical health

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 15:55:17 -0600
From: William Evans <evans@CCM.UA.EDU>
To: CONTENT@BAMA.UA.EDU

Campbell, R. Sherlock, and James W. Pennebaker. "The Secret Life of
Pronouns: Flexibility in Writing Style and Physical Health."
Psychological Science 14, no. 1 (2003): 60-65.

Campbell and Pennebaker investigate the relationship between linguistic
style and physical health. They use Latent Semantic Analysis to analyze
writing samples provided by students and prison inmates. The participants
also provided permission to track their illness-related visits to the
student-health center or the prison infirmary. Campbell and Pennebaker
report that change in the frequency with which participants used pronouns
(e.g., I, me, he, she) is the linguistic feature that best predicts
improvement in physical health. The data do not show that pronoun use
rises or falls as health improves. Rather, flexibility in pronoun use is
associated with improved physical health.

Reliability in cross-national content

Wed, 09 Apr 2003 15:35:51 -0500
From: William Evans <evans@CCM.UA.EDU>
To: CONTENT@BAMA.UA.EDU

Peter, Jochen, and Edmund Lauf. "Reliability in Cross-National Content
Analysis." Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 79, no. 4 (2002):
815-832.

Peter and Lauf analyze the impact of language skills and political knowledge
on intercoder reliability by asking students from ten countries (e.g.,
France, Greece, United States) to code BBC television news stories. Coders'
proficiency in English is positively correlated with reliability scores,
Peter and Lauf report (however, coders who report confidence in their coding
choices are indeed more likely to manifest higher inter-coder reliability
scores, regardless of English proficiency, suggesting that coders can
somehow sense whether or not their English proficiency is adequate for the
coding task at hand). The authors also report that coders who are
knowledgeable about British politics prove more reliable coders than those
who are relatively less knowledgeable.

Vocabulary richness

Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2003 15:55:59 -0500
From: William Evans <evans@CCM.UA.EDU>
To: CONTENT@BAMA.UA.EDU

Hoover, David L. "Another Perspective on Vocabulary Richness." Computers
and the Humanities 37, no. 2 (2003): 151-178.

Hoover questions "the assumption that appropriate measures of vocabulary
richness can capture an author's distinctive style or identity" (p. 151). He
reviews various techniques for assessing vocabulary richness, and he
discusses how these techniques have been used to identify authors'
distinctive styles. He develops procedures to test the validity of
vocabulary richness, and reports that variability within and across large
bodies of texts renders vocabulary richness a suspect measure. Hoover
concludes that "vocabulary richness is of marginal value in stylistic and
authorship studies because the basic assumption that it constitutes a
wordprint for authors is false" (p. 151).

Issues in latent semantic analysis

Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 16:15:59 -0500
From: William Evans <evans@CCM.UA.EDU>
To: CONTENT@BAMA.UA.EDU

Wolfe, Michael B. W., and Susan R. Goldman. "Use of Latent Semantic Analysis
for Predicting Psychological Phenomena: Two Issues and Proposed Solutions."
Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers 35, no. 1 (2003): 22-31.

Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) has great potential to predict psychological
phenomena, Wolfe and Goldman claim, but researchers must develop theoretical
understandings of the link between semantic data and psychological
processes. Wolfe and Goldman consider how best to generate and validate LSA
indexes used to assess the relationship between text content and subjects'
verbal or written responses to texts.

Web-based content analysis with TextGrab and TextQuest

Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2003 18:19:27 -0500
From: William Evans <evans@CCM.UA.EDU>
To: CONTENT@BAMA.UA.EDU

Garson, G. David. "Doing Web-Based Content Profile Analysis: A Tutorial
Review of TextGrab and TextQuest." Social Science Computer Review 21, no.
2 (2003): 250-256.

Garson provides a tutorial review of TextQuest, a content analysis program,
and TextGrab, a module for TextQuest that supports the capture and analysis
of text included in web sites. Garson reviews how TextGrab can be used to
capture text from web sites and prepare this text for subsequent analysis in
TextQuest. Garson provides a step-by-step account of how TextQuest users can
identify the words and phrases that most effectively differentiate web sites
(in this tutorial, Garson examines web sites for two U.S. Senators, Jesse
Helms and Hilary Clinton).

Entry-level video analysis

Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 15:45:39 -0500
From: William Evans <wevans@BAMA.UA.EDU>
To: CONTENT@BAMA.UA.EDU

Loehr, Dan, and Lisa Harper. "Commonplace Tools for Studying Commonplace
Interactions: Practitioners' Notes on Entry-Level Video Analysis." Visual
Communication 2, no. 2 (2003): 225-233.

Loehr and Harper review options for using inexpensive video recorders and
video annotation software to collect, annotate, and analyze video of human
interaction.

Categorizing texts by author gender

Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 18:37:22 -0500
From: William Evans <wevans@BAMA.UA.EDU>
To: CONTENT@BAMA.UA.EDU

Koppel, Moshe, Shlomo Argamon, and Anat Rachel Shimoni. "Automatically
Categorizing Written Texts by Author Gender." Literary and Linguistic
Computing 17, no. 4 (2002): 401-412.

Koppel et al. demonstrate how "automated text categorization techniques
can exploit combinations of simple lexical and syntactic features to infer
the gender of an author of an unseen formal written document with
approximately 80 percent accuracy. The same technique can be used to
determine if a document is fiction or non-fiction with approximately 98
percent accuracy" (p. 401).

This research is also discussed in a Boston Globe story available online.

Dictionary-based vs. correlational approaches

Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 02:04:55 +0000
From: William Evans <wevans@BAMA.UA.EDU>
To: CONTENT@BAMA.UA.EDU

Hogenraad, Robert, Dean P. McKenzie, and Normand
Péladeau. "Force and Influence in Content Analysis:
The Production of New Social Knowledge." Quality &
Quantity 37, no. 3 (2003): 221-238.

The authors compare two common approaches to
computer-aided content analysis: (1) dictionary-
based approaches in which words are assigned to
preexisting categories, and (2) correlational
approaches in which word correlations are examined
to discover themes. The authors discuss
epistemological and methodological issues and
provide examples of both types of analysis,
examples designed to highlight the strengths and
weaknesses of both approaches.

Analyzing Internet networks

Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2003 17:26:01 -0500
From: William Evans <wevans@BAMA.UA.EDU>
To: CONTENT@BAMA.UA.EDU

The latest issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication focuses
on "Internet Networks: The Form and the Feel"
(http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol8/issue4) and features several articles in
which content analysis (including computer-supported content analysis) is
discussed and applied. These articles include:

Foot, Kirsten A., Steven M. Schneider, Meghan Dougherty, Michael Xenos, and
Elana Larsen. "Analyzing Linking Practices: Candidate Sites in the 2002 US
Electoral Web Sphere." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 8, no. 4
(2003).
Available online at http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol8/issue4/foot.html.

Park, Han Woo, and Mike Thelwall. "Hyperlink Analysis of the World Wide Web:
A Review." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 8, no. 4 (2003).
Available online at http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol8/issue4/park.html.

Rosen, Devan, Joseph Woelfel, Dean Krikorian, and George A. Barnett.
"Procedures for Analyses of Online Communities." Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication 8, no. 4 (2003).
Available online at http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol8/issue4/rosen.html.

Wouters, Paul, and Diana Gerbec. "Interactive Internet? Studying Mediated
Interaction With Publicly Available Search Engines." Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication 8, no. 4 (2003).
Available online at http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol8/issue4/wouters.html.

Computer-supported tourism analysis

Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2003 14:56:16 -0500
From: William Evans <wevans@BAMA.UA.EDU>
To: CONTENT@BAMA.UA.EDU

Mehmetoglu, Mehmet, and Graham M. S. Dann. "Atlas/ti and Content/Semiotic
Analysis in Tourism Research." Tourism Analysis 8, no. 1 (2003): 1-13.

The authors compare semiotic and content analysis and review the use of
these methods in tourism research. The authors also compare traditional and
computer-supported analyses of tourism materials, focusing on their
experiences using Atlas/ti. Traditional and computer-supported techniques
should be seen as mutually beneficial, the authors conclude, in that each
technique has unique strengths (as well as unique shortcomings).

Reconceiving text analysis

Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2003 15:01:03 -0500
From: William Evans <wevans@BAMA.UA.EDU>
To: CONTENT@BAMA.UA.EDU

The most recent issue of Literary and Linguistic Computing features a
special section titled "Reconceiving Text Analysis." This section includes
the following five articles:

Ramsay, Stephen. "Toward an Algorithmic Criticism." Literary and Linguistic
Computing 18, no. 2 (2003): 167-174.

Sinclair, Stéfan. "Computer-Assisted Reading: Reconceiving Text Analysis."
Literary and Linguistic Computing 18, no. 2 (2003): 175-184.

Bradley, John. "Finding a Middle Ground between 'Determinism' and 'Aesthetic
Indeterminacy': A Model for Text Analysis Tools." Literary and Linguistic
Computing 18, no. 2 (2003): 185-207.

Rockwell, Geoffrey. "What is Text Analysis, Really?" Literary and Linguistic
Computing 18, no. 2 (2003): 209-219.

Corns, Thomas N. "Afterword." Literary and Linguistic Computing 18, no. 2
(2003): 221-223.

Abstracts are available online.

Automated essay scoring

Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2003 16:47:18 -0500
From: William Evans <wevans@BAMA.UA.EDU>
To: CONTENT@BAMA.UA.EDU

Shermis, Mark D., and Jill Burstein, eds. Automated Essay Scoring: A
Cross-Disciplinary Perspective. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,
2003.

Contributors discuss theoretical, methodological, and computational issues
related to automated essay scoring and evaluation. The Table of Contents
is available online.

Automated short-answer scoring

Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2003 16:49:21 -0500
From: William Evans <wevans@BAMA.UA.EDU>
To: CONTENT@BAMA.UA.EDU

Leacock, Claudia, and Martin Chodorow. "C-rater: Automated Scoring of
Short Answer Questions." Computers and the Humanities 37, no. 4 (2003):
389-405.

Leacock and Chodorow provide an overview of C-rater, an automated scoring
engine for responses to short-answer questions. Leacock and Chodorow
report results from two large-scale studies (one of which involved more
than 100,000 student responses to a question designed to assess reading
comprehension). C-rater agreed with human graders in 84% of cases scored,
Leacock and Chodorow report.
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