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Analyse Your Transcripts Using Leximancer Qualitative Analysis Software

August 30, 2013 Catherine Byrne in Focus Groups, Interviews, Qualitative Research, Research Transcription

Approaches to Qualitative Analysis of Transcripts

So you’re conducting audio interviews and receiving transcribed documents from Pacific Transcription.  But how will you analyse your transcripts? Some researchers use the ‘highlighter’ approach. However, this can be time-consuming and subjective as the dataset is prone to researcher bias in its exploration and interpretation. Instead, why not consider a qualitative analysis software such as Leximancer?

What is Leximancer?

Leximancer is a specialist analytics software for unstructured, qualitative textual data allowing you to increase the depth, rigour and objectivity of your findings.

Leximancer is Vista and Mac compatible and allows you to map themes, concepts and their associated relationships from a body of text. It is a concept mining tool offering objective, actionable insight in the form of visually compelling concept maps, dashboard reports and other xml exports. Hundreds of researchers from almost every Australian university hold individual licences.

How does Leximancer work?

Leximancer examines word co-occurrence information in text and identifies the characteristic distribution of words. The analysis process is based on interdisciplinary principles from linguistics, machine learning, complex networks theory, physics, content analysis and information science. For a white paper on Leximancer, please see: https://www.leximancer.com/lmedia/Leximancer_White_Paper_2010.pdf

Leximancer’s ‘automatic concept extraction’ means that you’re not telling the program the concepts/taxonomy nodes as in other software programs. Instead, concepts ‘emerge’ from the actual data. This provides a platform for unbiased, objective and automatic discovery whilst retaining user controlled exploration. There is no onerous set-up of dictionaries, keywords or ontology allowing you to get to a results-set quickly for further iterative analysis.

When should I use Leximancer?

In particular, Leximancer can be used when:

1. You have a lot of unstructured, textual data.
2. There is not enough time to analyse your data.
3. You would like the software to make suggestions for you or discover what is in the data that you are not aware of.

Applications of Leximancer with Conversation and Interview Transcripts

Use Leximancer’s visual and interactive Map to portray the Concepts and Themes embedded within a phenomenon of interest. Filter in or out content from specific speakers and perform a comparative analysis of speaker content. You can also use content from blogs, forums, emails, call centre dialogues and meetings (see: https://www.leximancer.com/lmedia/Leximancer_White_Paper_2010.pdf for full listing of possible applications).

What services does Pacific Transcription provide with Leximancer?

Pacific Transcription is a Leximancer partner, and is authorised to resell Leximancer to universities, academics and students for research purposes. We can also arrange Leximancer training or integration performed by a Leximancer consultant. We are able to assist your qualitative research project by providing basic reports and analysis. For more information, visit our partners page.  A Leximancer licence can be purchased at our online store.

Examples of Publications using Leximancer

Mapping a 40-year history with Leximancer: Themes and concepts in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.
Cretchley, J., Rooney, D., & Gallois, C. (2010). Mapping a 40-year history with Leximancer: Themes and concepts in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 41 (3), 318-328.

A New Role for Place Identity in Managing Organizational Change
Rooney, D., Paulsen, N., Callan, V.J., Brabant, M., Gallois, C., and Jones, E. (2010). A New Role for Place Identity in Managing Organizational Change . Management Communication Quarterly. 24(1), pp. 104-121

Posted by Anna Denmar