Evaluating a Case of Parent Separation in Social Services Through a Text Analysis: Clinical and Health Implications

Abstract

The assessment of the family system is very complex, as several factors have to be taken into account: The number of people involved (one or more children), the involvement of other partners, and the presence of legal disputes. Although evaluation practices have increased considerably, it remains difficult for services to prove their effectiveness. The questions that have guided this work have concerned how much and how do the discourses (discursive repertoires) produced by the conflicting parents change as a result of an intervention by the Service? And how much is it possible to evaluate the change in short texts? We used the Methodology for the Analysis of Computerised Text Data (MADIT) methodology that makes it possible to analyze the texts produced by the parents after the Service consultancy. The text is acquired through 14 emails sent by each parent to the other. The results showed that it was possible to detect a change in the repertoires used by the two parents to make decisions regarding their child. This data could increase the use of evaluation in the Services, reducing costs and evaluating change also by email. Future research could apply this methodology in situations where the conflict has not yet exploded and has not had an impact on children.

Keywords:

• Social science
• social service
• psychology
• evaluation
• text analysis

Notes

1 In the version offered by Strauss & Corbin (1997), it is assumed that there is no theory that guides the analysis, while in the version of Charmaz it is claimed that not having theoretical, implicit or explicit assumptions is quite impossible.