Working with words: exploring textual analysis in medical education research
Working with words: exploring textual analysis in medical education research
Context: text is familiar to us all. This paper offers an introduction to, and an exploration of, the range of methodological possibilities open to the education researcher who has chosen to use text as a research data source. It encourages a purposeful deliberation of the different textual sources available as data, the range of methodological approaches possible and the types of interpretation that can be adopted when embarking on an empirical study using textual data.
Methods: approaches to interpreting text are varied and utilise a range of analytical and interpretative strategies. To illustrate the theoretical points raised within this paper, two contrasting methods were applied to the same text. Tag cloud analysis and performative narrative analysis (PNA) were employed to analyse Chapter 4 of the UK government’s 2010 White Paper Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS.
Results: the adoption of these contrasting methodologies, which are not currently used extensively in medical education research, revealed that some common issues were identified by both tag clouds and PNA, but, in addition, each approach was able to unveil something unique about the text.
Conclusions: these two methods highlight the range of affordances, or possibilities, that textual analysis will have on the results. We suggest that medical education researchers should be encouraged to move away from the current dominant and privileged methodologies that seek to provide answers and explore other methods and approaches to textual data that encourage us to question and reflect more deeply.
Data Collection, Data Mining/methods, Education, Medical/methods, Electronic Data Processing/methods, Humans, Internet, Language, Research Design/standards, Research Personnel/psychology
372-380
Park, Sophie
c08f86aa-36ba-487a-992a-b753777b703f
Griffin, Ann
f8792909-d467-40c1-8dec-b86ebe750b05
Gill, Deborah
7efe669f-45e8-45d3-ab30-8717653353ca
16 March 2012
Park, Sophie
c08f86aa-36ba-487a-992a-b753777b703f
Griffin, Ann
f8792909-d467-40c1-8dec-b86ebe750b05
Gill, Deborah
7efe669f-45e8-45d3-ab30-8717653353ca
Park, Sophie, Griffin, Ann and Gill, Deborah
(2012)
Working with words: exploring textual analysis in medical education research.
Medical Education, 46 (4), .
(doi:10.1111/j.1365-2923.2011.04184.x).
Abstract
Context: text is familiar to us all. This paper offers an introduction to, and an exploration of, the range of methodological possibilities open to the education researcher who has chosen to use text as a research data source. It encourages a purposeful deliberation of the different textual sources available as data, the range of methodological approaches possible and the types of interpretation that can be adopted when embarking on an empirical study using textual data.
Methods: approaches to interpreting text are varied and utilise a range of analytical and interpretative strategies. To illustrate the theoretical points raised within this paper, two contrasting methods were applied to the same text. Tag cloud analysis and performative narrative analysis (PNA) were employed to analyse Chapter 4 of the UK government’s 2010 White Paper Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS.
Results: the adoption of these contrasting methodologies, which are not currently used extensively in medical education research, revealed that some common issues were identified by both tag clouds and PNA, but, in addition, each approach was able to unveil something unique about the text.
Conclusions: these two methods highlight the range of affordances, or possibilities, that textual analysis will have on the results. We suggest that medical education researchers should be encouraged to move away from the current dominant and privileged methodologies that seek to provide answers and explore other methods and approaches to textual data that encourage us to question and reflect more deeply.
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Published date: 16 March 2012
Additional Information:
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2012.
Keywords:
Data Collection, Data Mining/methods, Education, Medical/methods, Electronic Data Processing/methods, Humans, Internet, Language, Research Design/standards, Research Personnel/psychology
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 502604
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/502604
ISSN: 0308-0110
PURE UUID: 20f2eef5-e18d-4251-b3b1-82ba2e4b3fd4
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Date deposited: 02 Jul 2025 12:37
Last modified: 03 Jul 2025 02:31
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Contributors
Author:
Sophie Park
Author:
Ann Griffin
Author:
Deborah Gill
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