What is the place of interpretation in text analysis? An example using ALCESTE® software

ABSTRACT

Statistical text analyses appear at the borderline of quantitative and qualitative research, raising epistemological questions in the field. This paper focuses on a specific method of text analysis: the Reinert method. It aims to address the role of interpretation and subjectivity in the construction of the results using this kind of analysis. To this end, this manuscript presents a dual interpretation of a same corpus and software outputs highlighting the convergences and divergences in both researchers’ interpretations. It discusses how the use of statistics on qualitative data may provide a false sense of objectivity and sweep the questions of interpretation and epistemology away. Finally, it offers clear guidelines regarding individual and dual interpretation to those who wish to start using the Reinert method. We argue that this type of analysis is adaptable and can be applied across a variety of epistemological stances and research questions.

KEYWORDS:

• ALCESTE
• dual interpretation
• health psychology
• iramuteq
• qualitative method
• reinert method
• statistical text analysis

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2024.2316624

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2024.2333653)

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Fondation de France .

Notes on contributors

L. Montalescot

Lucile Montalescot is an associate professor in clinical health psychology at the University of Nîmes, France. Her work focuses on the adjustment of patients and their families to somatic illness, in particular chronic kidney disease, from both individual and dyadic perspectives. Interested in research methods, she uses both quantitative and qualitative approaches.

K. Lamore

Kristopher Lamore is a researcher in health psychology and recipient of a research chair in psycho-oncology and intervention research at the Université de Lille. His research interests focus on the psychological adjustment of patients and their relatives to cancer, as well as the development and evaluation of interventions to improve their quality of life.

C. Flahault

Cécile Flahault is an associate professor of clinical and health psychology at Université Paris Cité, France. Her research interests focus on the experiences of families coping with serious somatic illnesses, particularly cancer. In her work concerning children with cancer and their families, she strives to identify vulnerability factors, protective mechanisms, and post-cancer rehabilitation.

A. Untas

Aurélie Untas is a full professor of clinical and health psychology at Université Paris Cité, France. Her research interests focus on patients’ and relatives’ adjustment to chronic diseases, with a special interest in family relations. More recently, she developed a research program on young carers in France.