Despite the increasing adaption of automated text analysis in communication studies, its strengths and weaknesses in framing analysis are so far unknown. Fewer efforts have been made to automatic detection of networked frames. Drawing on the recent developments in this field, we harness a comparative exploration, using Latent Dirichlet Allocation…

This paper aims to critique approaches to qualitative coding that carry a bottom-up or inductive thinking. Despite the wide contributions of this epistemology to the social sciences, this paper contends that contemporary research and methodological debates have inadequately explored different epistemologies for coding. As such, this paper proposes…

Multiple-response questions are a common feature of survey-based research, as its advantages of information collection are well known. Statistical analysis of the responses, however, tends to be either one or two-dimensional, with the restrictions that this entails. This paper presents a multidimensional analysis protocol that provides the…

There have been several calls for more transparency in realist methods, particularly in the complex process of programme theory development and refinement. This paper will describe the way in which Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software, specifically, NUD*IST Vivo (NVivo), was used to build and refine programme theories (using…

The main aim of this study is to build a new observational coding system for sibling interactions (Sistema de Codificación de Interacciones entre Hermanos -- SCIH) and to analyze its psychometric properties and validity. First, this study offers the first Spanish adaptation of a self-report questionnaire to measure sibling relationships that…

There is a need to improve the ways in which Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) handles qualitative data. To this end, we propose to include ideas and routines from Grounded Theory (GT) in QCA. We will first argue that there is a natural fit between the two on the ontological level. On the methodological level, we will demonstrate in what ways…

From the perspective of study management, research is surprisingly lacking on two of the major challenges for planning and performing content analysis: determining the sample size (i.e. number of objects to code) and the required number of coders to hire. The optimization of both of these numbers will ultimately determine how efficiently available…

Whilst critical realism (CR) is becoming recognised as a significant meta-theory for the social sciences, there is little guidance on how to produce research which is consistent with its ontological and epistemological assumptions. This article contributes to an emerging discussion about how CR can be applied, drawing on an example of a…

Critical realism (CR) is a useful philosophical framework for social science; however, little guidance is available on which precise methods -- including methods of data collection, coding, and analysis -- are best suited to applied CR research. This article provides a concrete example of applied qualitative research using CR as a philosophical…

The use of computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) has not been without controversy, with a pervasive sense of skepticism and resistance towards its adoption by many scholars. Language-based researchers in particular, such as conversation and discourse analysts, have been slow to embrace such tools for their work. In this…