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A Technique of Computer Content Analysis of Transliterated Russian Language Textual Materials: A Research Note*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Charles D. Cary
Charles D. Cary*
Affiliation:
Stockton, California
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Abstract

The purpose of this note is to describe a technique of computer content analysis of transliterated Russian language textual materials and to illustrate the use of the technique with two examples of my research on the political socialization of Soviet schoolchildren.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 71 , Issue 1 , March 1977 , pp. 245 - 251
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1977

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Footnotes

*

I received a grant from the Graduate College of the University of Iowa for computer programming in connection with the research reported in this note. Staff members of the Laboratory for Political Research and of the Statistical Consulting Service, both at the University of Iowa, provided welcome assistance and advice. Gerhard Loewenberg offered helpful comments on a draft of this note.

References

1 Holsti, Ole R., Content Analysis for the Social Sciences and Humanities (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1969), p. 14 Google Scholar.

2 Examples of investigations employing the former and latter techniques are respectively the following: Lodge, Milton, Soviet Elite Attitudes Since Stalin (Columbus, Ohio: Charles Merrill, 1969)Google Scholar; and Hopmann, P. Terrence, “International Conflict and Cohesion in the Communist System,” International Studies Quarterly, 11 (September, 1967), 212–236 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 A description of KADP is available from John Winters, Department of Political Science, Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, Tennessee 37203. WORDS is described in Iker, Howard P. and Klein, Robert H., “WORDS: A Computer System for Analysis of Content,” Behavior Research Methods and Instrumentation, 6 (July, 1974), 430–438 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Conventional schemes for transliteration involve assignments of two Latin letters for a single Cyrillic letter and/or use of diacritical marks. See Shaw, J. Thomas, The Transliteration of Modern Russian for English-Language Publications (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967)Google Scholar.

5 In KADP the dictionary entries are specified by the user; in WORDS they are automatically chosen on the basis of the frequency of usage.

6 Oettinger, Anthony G., Automatic Language Translation: Lexical and Technical Aspects, With Particular Reference to Russian (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1960), pp. 143–151 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 The use of DWLRUSS requires little computer time; processing approximately 5000 cards with this program takes less than five minutes. DWLRUSS and its component subprograms are written in either PL/I or assembly language. These programs and a technical description of their operation are available from the Laboratory for Political Research, Department of Political Science, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242.

8 A description of FREQLIST is available from Keith Swigger, Department of Linguistics, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242.

9 Use of content analysis in research on political socialization has been encouraged by Dennis, Jack, “Future Work on Political Socialization,” in Socialization to Politics: A Reader, ed. Dennis, Jack (New York: John Wiley, 1973), p. 498 Google Scholar.

10 Cary, Charles D., “Patterns of Emphasis upon Community, Regime, and Authorities: A Computer Content Analysis of Soviet School History Textbooks” (paper, University of Iowa, 1974)Google Scholar; and Cary, Charles D., “Patterns of Emphasis upon Marxist-Leninist Ideology: A Computer Content Analysis of Soviet School History, Geography, and Social Science Textbooks,” Comparative Education Review, 20 (February, 1976), 11–30 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Standardization of textbooks is possible through translations of the Russian language versions into all of the languages in which instruction is offered.

12 The findings from a different kind of research are necessary to answer the question about the extent to which instruction affects the political socialization of Soviet young people.

13 See Easton, David, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: John Wiley, 1965)Google Scholar.

14 This inference is supported by an analysis of the confidence intervals for the percentages of exercises containing one or more references to the separate levels of a political system.

15 This inference is supported by the values of chi-square and chi-square-on-the-slope for the percentages of exercises containing one or more references to the separate levels of a political system.

16 These inferences are supported by an analysis of the confidence intervals of the percentages of exercises containing one or more references to Marxist-Leninist ideology.

17 These inferences are supported by regression analysis and analysis of variance of the percentages of exercises containing one or more references to Marxist-Leninist ideology.

18 The passage from the seventh to eighth grade corresponds with the transition between two periods of the psychological development of the Soviet child. For a discussion of these periods, see Bozhovich, L. I., Lichnost' i i ee formirovanie v detskom vozraste (Personality and Its Formation in Childhood) (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo ‘Prosveshchenie’, 1968)Google Scholar.

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