General Inquirer: A Computer Approach to Content Analysis

The general inquirer is a unique set of procedures for identifying, in a useful and meaningful way, recurrent patterns within the rich variety of man's written and spoken communications. Using the computer to implement analysis procedures, the general inquirer provides a remarkably flexible common referent for testing the hypothesis of different investigators. It provides investigators with explicit procedures that can be exchanged, applied to one another's data, discussed, argued, and revised. It generates new hypotheses and insights. The system is programmed to except actual text, look up words and phrases in dictionaries, assigned scripters, check for specified descriptor patterns, count occurrences, and retrieve sentences with specified characteristics. Beginning with studies of small group interaction, the applications of the book to content analysis have ranged over a wide variety of fields. In the first section of the book, the concept of content analysis is introduced and defined and the rationale and procedures of the general inquirer are presented. The second section offers example applications carefully selected from five years of research experience to illustrate different theoretical orientations, text problems and research designs. These orientations very from simple word and phrase counts to tests for complex thematic sequences. The research techniques very from producing simple graphs to the complexities of factor analysis or interaction effects in analysis of variance. The supreme virtue of the general inquiry method is that it keeps conceptual issues in the foreground and refuses to give undeserved prominence to the computer. Dr. Stone is thoroughly justified in insisting that the problem of inference should receive top billing in any appraisal results or evaluation of future alternatives.