ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an annotated list of computer programs currently available for quantitative text analysis. Software for thematic text analysis yields data matrixes, each column of which corresponds to a single theme and each cell of which contains the count or occurrence for the theme of its corresponding column. The program allows researchers to build a dictionary in which thematic constructs are defined in terms of words and phrases that are searched for in text. The General Inquirer is one of the oldest systems for text analysis. It consists of a collection of interdependent batch-oriented programs. The system classifies texts’ words into content categories according to the list of words-within-categories in its dictionary. The grammar organizes textual data around an actor-action-object relational structure. The program combines a front-end program with a relational database management system. The program is tailored for comparing propositional content among texts sampled from distinct social contexts.
