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Diane, I can't resist this question, having spent two projects tackling the elusiveness of ideology - how do you "catch" by any methods messages that are by most definitions pervasive but taken for granted, even invisible. If ideology is working, it can't be seen by those who participate in its creation - as Stuart Hall put it splendidly, ages back [something like] "we are all of us, most of the time, in ideology". I argued in "Nobody's Home" that catching ideology requires statistical data and qualitative data played off against each other. Was never very satisfied with my try at it, (but it did help develop NUD*IST. because the task needed gathering-up searches like overlap and near). Like you and Roel, I would assume that if you are asking about the dominance of ideas, counting has to come into it somewhere (if it's dominant it had better be frequent). But the nature of ideology confounds any simple reliance on counting (if it's *really* dominant, it will be invisible). How to handle the qualitative questioning then? Coding of course layers interpretation, but "bias" may not be a helpful way of seeing it. The hunt for ideology seems to me to be partly a search for the ways ideas interlock, support each other, in taken for granted linkages, and the best way to get at that is to code broadly, explore overlaps and cooccurrences, always reviewing, reading, rethinking, returning to the passages you now have juxtaposed. So much easier with N4 with the interactive node browser (sigh). No you don't need software - Helen Marshall did a great job of tackling the elusiveness of ideology in her PhD study of chosen childlessness (the book is Not Having Families, OUP ) and that wasn't a NUD*IST project; it was done on index cards (and I was the supervisor!) But the software would make it much swifter and much easier to move back and forth between the original text and the gathering of material where you are seeing ideas linked - I think Helen would agree now...?. hope this helps Lyn .. Prof. Lyn Richards, Research Professor of Qualitative Methodology, University of Western Sydney, Macarthur, Adjunct Professor, International Institute for Qualitative Methodology. Director, Research Services, Qualitative Solutions and Research. (email) [log in to unmask] (Ph) +61 3 9459 1699 (Fax) +61 3 9459 0435 (snail) Box 171, La Trobe University PO, Vic 3083, Australia. http://www.qsr.com.au > > I am at the stage of reading up on method to decide how to handle 40 > text > > documents looking for ideology within the text - ie how do the texts > > represent the institute from which they came to the public? > > > > I would appreciate comments on this, I think I can do one of two > things - > > 1. count the words which are ideological indicators such as > economic, > > values, or community type words and see how the counts compare or > > 2. code the documents and then count these indicators > > > > Problem is as I see it that the coding puts in another lay of > > interpretatation, although handled by a computer program eg ATLASTi > or > > Nudist, it still has my bias in that I select the indicators to be > codes - > > I still have to decide what my codes are. > > Advantage is that I can clarify the ideologies > > Opinions please? > > Regards, > > Diane Westerhuis > > Provisional Manager > > Staff Development & Continuing Education > > James Cook University > > Townsville, sunny Australia 4811 > http://www.jcu.edu.au/~ccdw > > http://www.jcu.edu.au/acsup/staffdev > > > > Ph. (international 61 7) (OZ 07) 47 815868 > > Fax 07 47 815838 > > > > %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%