Using Wordle as a Supplementary Research Tool

The product demonstrates a fast and visually rich way to enable researchers to have some basic understanding of the data at hand and is not recommend that this method be used as a stand-alone research tool comparable to traditional content analysis methods.

Abstract

A word cloud is a special visualization of text in which the more frequently used words are effectively highlighted by occupying more prominence in the representation. We have used Wordle to produce word-cloud analyses of the spoken and written responses of informants in two research projects. The product demonstrates a fast and visually rich way to enable researchers to have some basic understanding of the data at hand. Word clouds can be a useful tool for preliminary analysis and for validation of previous findings. However, Wordle is an adjunct tool and we do not recommend that this method be used as a stand-alone research tool comparable to traditional content analysis methods.