Psihologija (Jan 2014)

Psychometric evaluation of the Serbian dictionary for automatic text analysis - LIWCser

  • Bjekić Jovana,
  • Lazarević Ljiljana B.,
  • Živanović Marko,
  • Knežević Goran

DOI
https://doi.org/10.2298/PSI1401005B
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 47, no. 1
pp. 5 – 32

Abstract

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LIWC (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) is widely used word-level content analysis software. It was used in large number of studies in the fields of clinical, social and personality psychology, and it is adapted for text analysis in 11 world languages. The aim of this research was to validate empirically newly constructed adaptation of LIWC software for Serbian language (LIWCser). The sample of the texts consisted of 384 texts in Serbian and 141 texts in English. It included scientific paper abstracts, newspaper articles, movie subtitles, short stories and essays. Comparative analysis of Serbian and English version of the software demonstrated acceptable level of equivalence (ICCM=.70). Average coverage of the texts with LIWCser dictionary was 69.93%, and variability of this measure in different types of texts is in line with expected. Adaptation of LIWC software for Serbian opens entirely new possibilities of assessment of spontaneous verbal behaviour that is highly relevant for different fields of psychology. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 179018 i br. 175012]

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