GRAND SponsoredCommunity Event
Event Details
Unlock the Power of Text: Open Lecture and Software Training on Text and Social Media Analysis

January 19, 2012 | Vancouver, Canada


The School of Library, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS) at the University of British Columbia is hosting an open lecture and software training on tools and techniques for the collection and analysis of social media, email and other textual content. The January 19th workshop will be offered by Dr. Stuart Shulman, President and CEO of Texifter and Founding Director of the Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP).

Unlock the Power of Text: Open Lecture and Software Training on Text and Social Media Analysis

Date: Thursday January 19, 2012
Time: 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Location: Irving K. Barber Centre, School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, Room 458 (4th Floor), University of British Columbia

Presentation: Measuring Validity in Annotation
Tools for reviewing, coding, and retrieving text found in qualitative data analysis packages carry with them no particular attributes for ensuring the reliability or validity of the recorded observations. Based on more than 10 years of multidisciplinary experience doing qualitative research, this presentation guides researchers through all aspects of coder validity and reliability. This presentation demonstrates how text mining and analytic tools can be used to focus attention on difficult to code concepts and themes, which in many cases, constitute the most interesting terrain for investigation.

Training: DiscoverText Software
A PhD-holding Political Scientist, Stu knows the importance of easy to use, powerful, text analytic software. As founder of technology start up Texifter  and the QDAP labs, Stu’s work advances text mining and natural language processing research. His software demonstrations link these worlds via straightforward and easy to understand explanations of software features that can be tailored for all experience levels and industries. For the training, participants may bring their own laptops or use the desktop machines in the lab to connect to the UBC wireless network and learn to use DiscoverText.

Dr. Stuart Shulman (PhD, U Oregon, 1999) is founder & CEO of Texifter, LLC and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the founding Director of the Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP) at the University of Pittsburgh and at UMass Amherst, as well as Associate Director of the National Center for Digital Government. Dr. Shulman is editor of the Journal of Information Technology & Politics, which is the official journal of Information Technology & Politics section of the American Political Science Association.

This event is sponsored by SLAIS and co-sponsored by GRAND. 

All interested participants are requested to reserve a spot by sending an RSVP to luanne.freund@ubc.ca, including your name and affiliation.