Quantitative text analysis in gifted and talented research

Abstract

ABSTRACT The authors introduce readers to quantitative text analysis and its potential for analyzing text-based nonreactive measures as a means of broadening the evidential basis within research on giftedness and talent. After defining quantitative text analysis and describing how it can augment survey studies for analyses at individual and cultural levels, the special potential of quantitative text analysis for addressing cultural questions within gifted and talented research is described. Inductive and deductive techniques of quantitative text analysis are then introduced and illustrated with brief examples drawn from gifted and talented research. Finally, a brief illustrative study is presented via an extended series of linked worked examples focusing on the question of the place of giftedness and talent within mentoring discourse in US mass media of past and present in order to illustrate in more detail how quantitative text analysis can be used to improve the culture-level evidence base within gifted and talented education.