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This preliminary study explored the utility of computer-assisted lexical analysis of coronial reports to provide meaningful information for generating hypotheses and informing suicide research. Coroners' reports from 414 Indigenous and non-Indigenous suicide cases from the Northern Territory, Australia, were analyzed using LeximancerTM software, in a two stage process. Automatic lexical analysis of the text of all reports resulted in the identification of some concepts which were useful for suicide research, but these were overshadowed in the data display by the number of routine procedural terms recurring in all reports. A second stage of the analysis, limited to relevant concepts selected by the researchers revealed useful differentiation between subgroups of a population and concepts for hypothesis generation. The preliminary exploration concluded that lexical analysis of coronial reports can provide a starting point for generating hypotheses relevant to suicide research. While this method provides a certain benefit in providing an overview of large amounts of data and a degree of independence from some a-priori assumptions, further in-depth qualitative and quantitative analysis of data is required to more meaningfully explore the circumstances of suicide cases.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	suicide, content analysis, research methods, coronial reports
Research Division:	Medical and Health Sciences
Research Group:	Public Health and Health Services
Research Field:	Mental Health
Objective Division:	Health
Objective Group:	Health and Support Services
Objective Field:	Mental Health Services
Author:	Pridmore, S (Professor Saxby Pridmore)
ID Code:	84014
Year Published:	2013
Deposited By:	Medicine (Discipline)
Deposited On:	2013-04-11
Last Modified:	2014-05-06
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