If you have a chance, look up an interesting article:
Seale, Clive; Sue Ziebland; Jonathan Charteris-Black. Gender, cancer experience and internet use: A comparative keyword analysis of interviews and online cancer support groups. Social Science & Medicine 2006 vol. 62 pp. 2577-2590.
It discusses a research method that uses a software tool (Wordsmith) to find differences between two documents and then illuminates those differences. The researchers used the tool to examine how men referred to their cancer in a prostate cancer forum versus the ways that women referred to their breast cancer in a forum.
This is not a tool/method that would have universal appeal, but I can see it being very useful in some situations and for doing initial analysis and comparisons of some texts.
Overall, a very interesting article from a research methods perspective, a medical perspective and a gender perspective.
1 comment:
Have I been teaching school for way too long if the first thing I see is--aha!--another way to check for plagiarism?
I assume Wordsmith is much more granualar than that, and it might do a rudimentary (or maybe better than that) version of what Nvivo does...Since I have a couple of projects that might benefit, I think I'll see if it's hanging around on the web.
Thanks for sharing this!
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