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Dissertation Information for Keith C. Wright

NAME:
- Keith C. Wright
- (Alias) Kieth Carter Wright

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Library and Information Science

SCHOOL:
- Columbia University (USA) (1972)

ADVISORS:
- Maurice Tauber

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Jessica Lee Harris
- Theodore C. Hines

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: Computer-assisted analysis of a large corpus of current educational report vocabulary

Abstract: This stuyd of present-day educational

research report vocabulary was conduscted in

the context of the ongoing research in

subject analysis and thesaurus construction

and maintenance at Columbia University

School of Library Service. It respresents an

effort to increase substantive information

about the linguistic aspects of indexings.

The test universe was in the social

sciences, but the conclusions seem generally

applicable.

First, the study summarises the state of the

art in automatic and computer-assisted

indexing concluding that language

complexities necessitate human decisions

both in indexing and indexing vocabulary

construction. The computer is seen as a

useful tool for counting, formatting, and

displaying indexing information.

next, the particular problems of social

science information handling are discussed.

The educational resouces Information Center

(ERIC) system is described and a critical

appraisal of that system in the areas of

decentralisatio, quality of information, and

indexing vocabulary/thesaurus structure is

presented.

The study examines the vocabulary of titles

and abstracts from a stratified sample of

300 report resumes taken from the ERIC TAPE

version of Research in Education between

November, 1966 and March , 1968. After the

removal of function words like articles,

pronouns, preporsitions and conjunctions,

25,325 word tokens remained representing

4,887 unique word types. The frequency ranks

of the sample were compared with the

frequency ranks of the same word types found

by Kucera and Francis [footnote] and with

the frequency ranks of word sample from

twelve of the ERIC clearninghouses.

While the general growth pattern of new word

types added to the vocabulary followed the

expected Zipf curves, two phenomena deserve

comment: (1) high frequency rank patterns

remained stable even when the number of

words processed was doubled, and (2) proper

nouns remained relatively stable in their

rate of occurence as increasing amounts of

text were processed.

Rank frequency comparisons among the word

samples showed (1) an expected similarity

between the overall educational research

sample and the general American English

sample, (2) an expected dissimilarity

between the education research sample and

the word samples of the tweleve

clearinghouses. These clearinghouse sample

were also dissimilar from the general

American English sample.

Words which occurred in the educational

research sample fifty or more times were

utilized as word pairs in a search of the

300 report resumes for word pair

coorcurrences. The expected number of

conccurrrences was not found that further

investigation of the concurrences was not

found that further investigation of the

conccurrence of multiword sets is suggested.

Word pairs which cooccurred five or more

times were found also to be actual indexing

terms utilized in the Thesaurus of ERIC

Descriptors and in Education Index. The

large naumber of word type pairs used as

parts of larger multiword headings and

structure is essential.

In the final section of the report the

results of the study are used to make

specific suggestions concerning the use of

coputer assisted text processing techniques

similar to those developed in this study as

a means bot of improving indexing in

information center operations. Specific

suggestions concerning the maintenance and

revision of the ERIC thesaurus are made.

Appendices include ranked and alphabetical

word lists, cooccurrence data, index use of

cooccurring word pairs, and copies of the

computer programs written by the author of

the study.

MPACT Scores for Keith C. Wright

A = 0
C = 1
A+C = 1
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-06-15 16:08:27

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Students under Keith C. Wright

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- Andrea Michele Burgard - University of Maryland (1979)