Applying corpus linguistics in a health care context

Adolphs, Svenja; Brown, Brian; Carter, Ronald; Crawford, Paul; Sahota, Opinder

doi:10.1558/japl.v1.i1.9

Cited by 28 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…The approach has been applied to healthcare studies since the 1990s, though not yet with great frequency. [7][8][9][10][11] bIAses of trAdItIonAl reseArch ApproAches versus Internet forum-bAsed dIscourse AnAlysIs The assessment of patients' behaviour for research purposes is fraught with difficulties (Box 1). 12 One of the problems of measuring behaviours is that the act of measurement can itself influence behaviour.…”

Section: Discourse Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Making sense of patients’ internet forums: a systematic method using discourse analysis

et al. 2014

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IntroductIonA survey of access to the internet in the UK conducted in 2008 revealed that the internet is used by 79% of men and 75% of women of all ages including 72% of people aged 55-64 years and 32% of people aged ≥65 years.1 Internet data that is freely and publicly accessible are now being used for research purposes. 2,3 Internet communities offer an increasingly important source of information expressed openly by individuals. In particular, the internet offers access to hard-to-reach groups who are often excluded (or exclude themselves) from traditional research studies. dIscourse AnAlysIsDiscourse analysis (DA), an approach to analysing naturally occurring language, is a technique that is particularly suited to examining internet data. 4,5 DA is pertinent to health care for it has the potential to reveal the dimensions of health beliefs, the doctorpatient relationships and the dissemination of health information. The focus of DA is on communicative behaviour. 6 Within internet forums communicative behaviour is the manner in which individuals communicate through written text.At a basic level, interrogation with linguistic analysis software reveals word frequency. Frequency is a simple way to identify problems and issues. We can look at how patterns of words colocate together and uncover associations between words (that is, concordances) that may provide insights into people, groups, and ideas. With the development of computers, linguistics has become involved using concordancing where keywords from a body of text, often termed a corpus, are highlighted in their surrounding context. Search engines like Google and Yahoo are, at heart, simple concordancers in their browsing functions. They offer the casual user the opportunity to search a very large database for examples of a single word or phrase (one's own name, for instance). Linguistic concordancing offers the opportunity for more sophisticated language-based analyses. The techniques are very widely-used in language studies; for example, in forensic linguistics (assessing whether a document has been forged or to examine witness statements). The approach has been applied to healthcare studies since the 1990s, though not yet with great frequency. 7-11bIAses of trAdItIonAl reseArch ApproAches versus Internet forum-bAsed dIscourse AnAlysIs The assessment of patients' behaviour for research purposes is fraught with difficulties (Box 1). 12 One of the problems of measuring behaviours is that the act of measurement can itself influence behaviour. The measurement of behaviour is vulnerable to reactivity and self-presentational bias on the part of the patient. Reactivity is the tendency of attention from others to influence behaviour. If patients are aware that their behaviour is being monitored, this might stimulate a specific behaviour simply by drawing attention to it. This is because of self-presentational bias. Patients may perceive that a certain behaviour, for example, adherence to treatment, is one of the duties expected of the 'good patient' and may be re...

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Section: Discourse Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Making sense of patients’ internet forums: a systematic method using discourse analysis

et al. 2014

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“…Lexical analysis is based on an innovative approach to using software originally designed for "corpus linguistics analysis" (CL) (e.g., Adolphs et al 2004;Seale et al 2006). Corpus linguistics is the analysis of large collections of stored, naturally occurring texts, and is typically used to examine discourses, that is, to examine texts as the representation of a certain world view or perception.…”

Section: Methods Of Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Sentiments and Perceptions of Business Respondents on Social Media: an Exploratory Analysis

Grinsven

Snijkers

2015

Journal of Official Statistics

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The perceptions and sentiments of business respondents are considered important for statistical bureaus. As perceptions and sentiments are related to the behavior of the people expressing them, gaining insights into the perceptions and sentiments of business respondents is of interest to understand business survey response. In this article we present an exploratory analysis of expressions in the social media regarding Statistics Netherlands. In recent years, social media have become an important infrastructure for communication flows and thus an essential network in our social structure. Within that network participants are actively involved in expressing sentiments and perceptions. The results of our analysis provide insights into the perceptions and sentiments that business respondents have of this national statistical institute and specifically its business surveys. They point towards the specific causes that have led to a positive or a negative sentiment. Based on these results, recommendations aimed at influencing the perceptions and sentiments will be discussed, with the ultimate goal of stimulating survey participation. We also suggest recommendations regarding social media studies on sentiments and perceptions of survey respondents.

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“…Analysis employed Wordsmith software developed for corpus linguistics studies (Scott, 1996(Scott, , 1997Adolphs et al, 2004) to compare the relative 'keyness' of keywords. In conventional corpus linguistics, the text of interest is compared with a larger reference corpus (for example, the British National Corpus) to elucidate stylistic, grammatical or other characteristics.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender accommodation in online cancer support groups

Seale

2006

Health (London)

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The postings made to Internet forums by relatives and friends of people with breast and prostate cancer are described. Women post very frequently on the prostate cancer forum and assume a communication style that is similar to women elsewhere, prioritizing emotional forms of communication over the informational forms preferred by men and showing only mild signs of accommodation to a male style. Men on the breast cancer forum are in a minority and are often responding to the current or anticipated loss of a partner. Their communication behaviour is radically different from that required by dominant conceptions of masculinity. They prioritize emotional communication and the emotional welfare of family members. They experience this new form of communication as unsettling to their conceptions of traditional masculinity. Internet cancer support groups thus favour a form and content of communication generally associated with women’s culture

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Applying corpus linguistics in a health care context

Cited by 28 publications

References 38 publications

Making sense of patients’ internet forums: a systematic method using discourse analysis

Making sense of patients’ internet forums: a systematic method using discourse analysis

Sentiments and Perceptions of Business Respondents on Social Media: an Exploratory Analysis

Gender accommodation in online cancer support groups

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