Numbers and Words: Reflecting on Quantitizing Processes in Computer-assisted Text Analysis

The paper presents some methodological considerations on the use of computer-based text analysis to integrate qualitative and quantitative methods in social research, towards the adoption of mixed methods approach. The contribution focuses on the quantitizing processes related to coding procedures of textual data. Showing how the advent of computerized software programs to manage both qualitative and quantitative data have promoted a largely technical view of quantitizing, a plurality of dimensions (theoretical, methodological, practical) are taken into account. The challenges of quantitizing within computer-based text analysis are to decide which textual data (unstructured and qualitative data) will be the objects of conversion in numerical data (structured and quantitative data), which coding procedures have to be implemented, for what purpose and what are the software roles in such processes. Potential risks connected to improper use of software are presented, to guarantee methodological accuracy and the quality of analysis: among them, the paper underlines the propensity to “forced quantifications” according to the “myth of the measurement”, till the excessive simplification of the words count as the main criterion for defining inferences about the texts meanings and the senders intentions. The quantitizing requires a continuous cycling between assigning numbers to meaning and meaning to numbers, between measurement and interpretation. Thus, the conception of quantitizing as unidirectional as moving from qualitative to quantitative data is critically analyzed, as well as the conditions under which mixed methods approach can be implemented in computer-based text analysis.