Abstract

Studies have show that written emotional expression assists in the recovery and alleviates the pain associated with traumatic experiences, cancer diagnoses, and chronic illnesses. Written interventions have been developed to utilize this emotional coping approach. Unfortunately, evaluation of participants and patients written text is time consuming and subjective to the coder. Researchers have developed computational text analysis programs in an attempt to find an alternative to human coders for text analysis. The current study will utilize data from previous research performed by Owen et al., (2005) entitled Randomized Pilot of a Self-Guided Internet Coping Group for Women With Early Stage Breast Cancer, as well as from research performed by Bantum and Owen, (2009) entitled Evaluating the Validity of Computerized Content Analysis Programs for Identification of Emotional Expression in Cancer Narratives. This present study will evaluate the previously collected data to examine the validity between the previously validated Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2001 and the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2007, which has been edited based on the downfalls of the previous model. Results indicate that LIWC 2001 and LIWC 2007 have a high validity in their ability to identify emotional expression; however, LIWC 2001 is superior in its precision of emotional identification. When comparing the results of LIWC 2001 and LIWC 2007 with human coders, LIWC 2001 most accurately reflects the human coders in emotional identification.

LLU Discipline

Clinical Psychology

Department

Psychology

School

School of Behavioral Health

First Advisor

Owen, Jason E.

Second Advisor

Boyd, Kendal

Third Advisor

Vermeersch, David A.

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Level

Ph.D.

Year Degree Awarded

2015

Date (Title Page)

12-2015

Language

English

Library of Congress/MESH Subject Headings

Emotions -- Psychological aspects; Emotions -- Measurement; Psycholinguistics; Emotive (Linguistics); Psychological Tests

Subject - Local

Emotional Expression; Computational text analysis; Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count; Emotional Identification;

Type

Thesis

Page Count

57

Digital Format

PDF

Digital Publisher

Loma Linda University Libraries

Usage Rights

This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has granted Loma Linda University a limited, non-exclusive right to make this publication available to the public. The author retains all other copyrights.

Collection

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Collection Website

http://scholarsrepository.llu.edu/etd/

Repository

Loma Linda University. Del E. Webb Memorial Library. University Archives

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