Text Mining for Qualitative Data Analysis in the Social Sciences


Book Description

Gregor Wiedemann evaluates text mining applications for social science studies with respect to conceptual integration of consciously selected methods, systematic optimization of algorithms and workflows, and methodological reflections relating to empirical research. In an exemplary study, he introduces workflows to analyze a corpus of around 600,000 newspaper articles on the subject of “democratic demarcation” in Germany. He provides a valuable resource for innovative measures to social scientists and computer scientists in the field of applied natural language processing.




An Introduction to Text Mining


Book Description

Students in social science courses communicate, socialize, shop, learn, and work online. When they are asked to collect data for course projects they are often drawn to social media platforms and other online sources of textual data. There are many software packages and programming languages available to help students collect data online, and there are many texts designed to help with different forms of online research, from surveys to ethnographic interviews. But there is no textbook available that teaches students how to construct a viable research project based on online sources of textual data such as newspaper archives, site user comment archives, digitized historical documents, or social media user comment archives. Gabe Ignatow and Rada F. Mihalcea's new text An Introduction to Text Mining will be a starting point for undergraduates and first-year graduate students interested in collecting and analyzing textual data from online sources, and will cover the most critical issues that students must take into consideration at all stages of their research projects, including: ethical and philosophical issues; issues related to research design; web scraping and crawling; strategic data selection; data sampling; use of specific text analysis methods; and report writing.




Text Mining


Book Description

Online communities generate massive volumes of natural language data and the social sciences continue to learn how to best make use of this new information and the technology available for analyzing it. Text Mining brings together a broad range of contemporary qualitative and quantitative methods to provide strategic and practical guidance on analyzing large text collections. This accessible book, written by a sociologist and a computer scientist, surveys the fast-changing landscape of data sources, programming languages, software packages, and methods of analysis available today. Suitable for novice and experienced researchers alike, the book will help readers use text mining techniques more efficiently and productively.




Qualitative Data Analysis


Book Description

Qualitative Data Analysis shows that learning how to analyse qualitative data by computer can be fun. Written in a stimulating style, with examples drawn mainly from every day life and contemporary humour, it should appeal to a wide audience.




Quantifying Approaches to Discourse for Social Scientists


Book Description

This book provides an overview of a range of quantitative methods, presenting a thorough analytical toolbox which will be of practical use to researchers across the social sciences as they face the challenges raised by new technology-driven language practices. The book is driven by a reflexive mind-set which views quantifying methods as complementary rather than in opposition to qualitative methods, and the chapters analyse a multitude of different intra- and extra-textual context levels essential for the understanding of how meaning is (re-)constructed in society. Uniting contributions from a range of national and disciplinary traditions, the chapters in this volume bring together state-of-the-art research from British, Canadian, French, German and Swiss authors representing the fields of Political Science, Sociology, Linguistics, Computer Science and Statistics. It will be of particular interest to discourse analysts, but also to other scholars working in the digital humanities and with big data of any kind.




Research Advances in Data Mining Techniques and Applications


Book Description

For contemporary societies, data mining has emerged as a serious challenge. Thanks to more advanced analytical tools, the Big Data explosion has enabled businesses to assess their performance more thoroughly and accurately. For example, transitioning from using a basic spreadsheet to using data lake modeling offers more flexibility in terms of consulting and summarizing vast amounts of data from many business angles. Data mining, which is the foundation for this optimization of data analysis, has been strengthened by artificial intelligence and machine learning to find patterns in this deluge of data and build future prediction models, turning it into a critical tool for decision-making. This book provides an understanding of the most modern techniques and uses for data mining. It examines data mining in order to classify datasets, predict outcomes, and optimize analyses. Furthermore, the book demonstrates these technological developments by highlighting relevant applications of data mining in industry, biology, education, medicine, and health.




Computer Supported Qualitative Research


Book Description

The World Conference on Qualitative Research (WCQR) is an annual event that aims to bring together researchers, academics and professionals, promoting the sharing and discussion of knowledge, new perspectives, experiences and innovations on the field of Qualitative Research. This book includes a selection of the articles accepted for presentation and discussion at WCQR2019, held in Porto, Portugal, October 16-18, 2019. WCQR2019 featured four main application fields (Education, Health, Social Sciences, and Engineering/Technology) and seven main subjects: Rationale and Paradigms of Qualitative Research; Systematization of Approaches with Qualitative Studies; Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research; Data Analysis Types; Innovative Processes of Qualitative Data Analysis; Qualitative Research in Web Context; Qualitative Analysis with Software Support. The book is a valuable resource for everyone interested in Qualitative Research with emphasis on Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis.




The Routledge Reviewer’s Guide to Mixed Methods Analysis


Book Description

The Routledge Reviewer’s Guide to Mixed Methods Analysis is a groundbreaking edited book – the first devoted solely to mixed methods research analyses, or mixed analyses. Each of the 30 seminal chapters, authored by internationally renowned scholars, provides a simple and practical introduction to a method of mixed analysis. Each chapter demonstrates "how to conduct the analysis" in easy-to-understand language. Many of the chapters present new topics that have never been written before, and all chapters offer cutting-edge approaches to analysis. The book contains the following four sections: Part I Quantitative Approaches to Qualitative Data (e.g., factor analysis of text, multidimensional scaling of qualitative data); Part II Qualitative Approaches to Quantitative Data (e.g., qualitizing data, mixed methodological discourse analysis); Part III "Inherently" Mixed Analysis Approaches (e.g., qualitative comparative analysis, mixed methods social network analysis, social media analytics as mixed analysis, GIS as mixed analysis); and Part IV Use of Software for Mixed Data Analysis (e.g., QDA Miner, WordStat, MAXQDA, NVivo, SPSS). The audience for this book includes (a) researchers, evaluators, and practitioners who conduct a variety of research projects and who are interested in using innovative analyses that will allow them to extract more from their data; (b) academics, including faculty who would use this book in their scholarship, as well as in their graduate-level courses, and graduate students who need access to a comprehensive set of mixed analysis tools for their dissertations/theses and other research assignments and projects; and (c) computer-assisted data analysis software developers who are seeking additional mixed analyses to include within their software programs. Chapter 24 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.




Introduction to Text Analytics


Book Description

This easy-to-follow book will revolutionise how you approach text mining and data analysis as well as equipping you with the tools, and confidence, to navigate complex qualitative data. It can be challenging to effectively combine theoretical concepts with practical, real-world applications but this accessible guide provides you with a clear step-by-step approach. Written specifically for students and early career researchers this pragmatic manual will: • Contextualise your learning with real-world data and engaging case studies. • Encourage the application of your new skills with reflective questions. • Enhance your ability to be critical, and reflective, when dealing with imperfect data. Supported by practical online resources, this book is the perfect companion for those looking to gain confidence and independence whilst using transferable data skills.




Pathways Between Social Science and Computational Social Science


Book Description

This volume shows that the emergence of computational social science (CSS) is an endogenous response to problems from within the social sciences and not exogeneous. The three parts of the volume address various pathways along which CSS has been developing from and interacting with existing research frameworks. The first part exemplifies how new theoretical models and approaches on which CSS research is based arise from theories of social science. The second part is about methodological advances facilitated by CSS-related techniques. The third part illustrates the contribution of CSS to traditional social science topics, further attesting to the embedded nature of CSS. The expected readership of the volume includes researchers with a traditional social science background who wish to approach CSS, experts in CSS looking for substantive links to more traditional social science theories, methods and topics, and finally, students working in both fields.