Thematic Text Research Articles

A Discourse Analysis Perspective of Thematic Structure and Thematic Progression in Students’ Written Narrative Texts: A Case of Mjimpya Secondary School Students in Morogoro Municipality

The study investigated the thematic structure and thematic progression in students’ written narrative texts. Specifically, it analysed types of themes and identified types of thematic progression patterns employed in students’ written narrative texts. It also examined the implications of the theme and thematic progression pattern’s predominance in students’ written narrative texts. 85 participants were selected from among Form Three and Form Four students. Data was collected using the closed test and documentary reviews. Data was coded and analysed using Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Thematic Progression (TP) theories by Halliday, Mathiessen, and Danes respectively. The findings indicated that students employed the taxonomy of four types of themes in their narrative texts: topical theme, textual theme, interpersonal theme, and macro theme. The topical theme was predominantly used followed by textual theme and interpersonal theme. The findings also revealed the taxonomy of seven types of thematic progression patterns in students’ written narrative texts, namely: constant pattern, zigzag pattern, and multiple patterns, constant-zigzag or zigzag-constant, constant-zigzag-multiple, zigzag-multiple, and constant macro pattern. The constant pattern was predominantly used followed by a zigzag pattern and then multiple patterns. The predominance of topical themes and constant thematic progression patterns implied that students tended to rely on thematic selections like topical themes and constant which seem simpler to use rather than textual themes, interpersonal themes, zigzag patterns and multiple patterns, all of which seem complex for students since they need advanced and sophisticated knowledge and skills to apply these thematic structures and progression patterns in their texts. Thus, students’ dependence on simple thematic selections indicates a lack of knowledge or ability to use complex thematic structures and thematic progression patterns in their written narrative texts while these thematic structures have a crucial role in their writing. Therefore, a systematic approach to teaching thematic selections is crucial. The findings of the current study contribute to the body of knowledge on thematic structure and progression in academic writing due to the detailed taxonomy of thematic structure and progression patterns revealed in this study. The study recommends that educational planners and implementers ensure that the theory of thematic structure and thematic progression are systematically integrated into the teaching and learning of writing activities from lower levels of education, specifically secondary education. Further, the study recommends further research in this area to use different approaches, genres and respondents from different settings such as advanced-level secondary school students

Digitalization and power shift in the food market

This research explores how smartphone applications impact consumer empowerment in a market where companies have more power than consumers, and consumers distrust companies. We draw on Yuka, a scanner app that allows its 44 million users to access nutritional quality scores and other information on food products. We conducted a thematic text analysis of 1,651 user reviews and 117 media articles. Our results indicate that, in the food market, such apps (1) bring transparency to products, which facilitates better purchasing choices, (2) empower consumers, and (3) trigger a shift in power, forcing companies to improve the quality of their products to regain consumer trust. We discuss the implications for research, practice and policy in light of the increasing demand for healthy, safe food. This situation, where power shifts from traditional market players to new digital players and consumers, generating disruptions and emancipation, could become commonplace in futures of market society.

Discovering Hidden Patterns: Applying Topic Modeling in Qualitative Research

In qualitative studies, researchers must devote a significant amount of time and effort to extracting meaningful themes from huge sets of texts and examining the links between themes, which are frequently done manually. The availability of natural language models has enabled the application of a wide range of techniques for automatically detecting hierarchy, linkages, and latent themes in texts. This paper aims to investigate the coherence of the topics acquired from the analysis with the predefined themes, the hierarchy between the topics, the similarity between the topics and the proximity-distance between the topics by means of the topic model based on BERTopic using unstructured qualitative data. The qualitative data for this study was gathered from 106 students engaged in a university-run pedagogical formation certificate program. In BERTopic procedure, paraphrase-multilingual-MiniLM-L12-v2 model was used as sentence transformer model, UMAP was used as dimension reduction method and HDBSCAN algorithm was used as clustering method. It is found that BERTopic successfully identified six topics corresponding to the six predicted themes in unstructured texts. Moreover 74% of the texts containing some themes could be classified accurately. The algorithm was also able to successfully identify which topics were similar and which topics differed significantly from the others. It was concluded that BERTopic is a procedure that can identify themes that researchers do not notice depending on the density of the data in qualitative data analysis and has the potential to enable qualitative research to reach more detailed findings.

Collaborative governance and integrated risk management framework of natural disasters

PurposeThis study aims to align the objectives of key stakeholders by developing an integrated framework for high-impact natural disaster risk management. High-impact natural disasters have emerged as one of the most challenging policy issues.Design/methodology/approachThe authors have applied the thematic text analysis for analysing the list of questions essential to develop an integrated framework. For theory, the authors have used the theoretical framework of collaborative governance.FindingsThe current work explains how to identify key stakeholders. Furthermore, it describes the framework to fit stakeholders' actions into the actionable components of risk management. Additionally, this framework also helps the firms that fall under the category of the industries “in the proximity of risks” and “the support industries” in modifying their role in the context of natural disaster risk.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitation of this framework is that the authors relied on commonly occurring natural disaster risks to develop the framework. Therefore, risk-specific aspects are less likely to be thoroughly covered in this framework. However, this limitation is not directly impacting the goal of this study. Additionally, in the future more comprehensive framework with the additional element in the existing framework can overcome these limitations.Practical implicationsThe findings of the study offer insights that can be useful for policymakers in developing various preventive strategies. Managers can use the results and align their objectives with policy goals.Social implicationsSocially, if communities try to design local risk management strategies, this framework would be helpful.Originality/valueThis study illustrates the role of objective alignment in high-impact risk management. This study is crucial in extending current knowledge on high-impact natural disaster risk management.

A comparative study of thematic choices and thematic progression patterns in human-written and AI-generated texts

By adopting systemic functional grammar as the theoretical framework, the present research investigates the choices of the textual, the interpersonal, the topical Themes, and thematic progression patterns in human-written and AI-generated argumentative texts to examine how the human author and the robot organize the clause and text. The findings suggest that human-written and AI-generated texts differ significantly in using the subtypes of textual, interpersonal, and marked topical Themes. In terms of textual Themes, the machine tends to use more concession signals to repeat information that has been stated earlier, adopt fewer condition signals since the robot may be less likely to imagine possible or impossible situations, and repetitively rely on clause-initial conjunctive adjuncts of addition to extend the clause to the previous text. As for interpersonal Themes, the robot seldom adopts modal adjuncts or modal verbal operators as interpersonal Themes, which may suggest its lack of awareness of interaction with the reader and its avoidance of expressing its viewpoints in a typical or congruent way. Regarding topical Themes, the less use of marked themes in AI-generated texts demonstrates that AI may less carefully plan the development of the text to foreground the setting or construct coherent text. Considering thematic progression patterns, the frequent use of the constant pattern in AI-generated texts prevents the text from development and makes the text redundant and simplistic like a list of ideas.

The Development of the “New Jews” Theme in Syriac Texts on Islam from the Seventh to the Ninth Centuries

The Development of the “New Jews” Theme in Syriac Texts on Islam from the Seventh to the Ninth Centuries

Web search results processing in an information support system for decision-making processes

Objectives. The problem of the web search results processing in an information support system for decision[1]making is solved in order to create and correct a meaningful description of a problem situation. An approach to solving this problem is proposed based on the use of thematic text corpora (collections of texts on a specific topic) as knowledge about the subject area, as well as a knowledge representation model based on verbal associations. When solving problems of the web search results processing in a decision-making information support system, five main goals are pursued: the formation of an extended description of a problem situation, the synthesis of a search prescription, an Internet search for information about decisions made, the synthesis of a retelling of the information found, and an assessment of the quality of the found analogues of the decisions made.Methods. Methods of set theory, graph theory and mathematical linguistics are used.Results. A mathematical model has been developed for the web search results processing in an information support system for decision making. The concepts of verbal association of words and texts, as well as pragmatically complete lexical structure, are formalized. The proven properties of such structures provide algorithmization of information processes in the model under consideration.Conclusion. The approach to modeling is based on the formalization of the concepts of the informativeness of words, sentences, texts and the informativeness of verbal associations between them. As an implementation of the model proposed in the article, algorithms have been developed for creating a dictionary of pragmatically complete lexical structures, creating structural-lexical templates for sentences, texts and subject areas, synthesizing a brief retelling of the information found, and assessing the quality of the found analogues of the decisions made.

A Comparative Analysis of Theme and Thematic Progression in Descriptive Texts

<p><strong>This study aims to analyze the theme and thematic progression and compare both student’s and standardized descriptive texts. Additionally, the research would delve into the pedagogical implication in teaching a descriptive text. A text from a student of a senior high school in Semarang, Indonesia and a TOEFL Practice text were collected in the document analysis. Thematic analysis was done by applying SFL principles. The result showed that both texts employed textual and topical theme system mostly with model’s text using an interpersonal theme once. the student’s descriptive text had few missing themes which also indicated that it had grammatical mistakes that need to be given attention when teaching language to learners. Both texts served the thematic progression of zig-zag and reiteration as descriptive text aims to describe and identify an object. Although, the student had chosen few multiple patterns and seldom had no pattern in the text. Furthermore, the integration of thematic system studies and thematic development towards a descriptive text through modeling and construction activities can contribute greatly to providing substantial learning benefits to promote language proficiency and efficient communication skills.</strong></p><p><strong><em>Keywords</em></strong> - <em>Theme progression; SFL; Descriptive text; ELT</em>.</p>

The Responses to Wh-Questions in the Journalism Course of Students at Universitas PGRI Sumatera Barat

The purpose of this study was to understand how journalism students apply the 5w 1h response in their news writing. This study is a qualitative study. The data source of this study is the thematic text in the mid-semester exam of journalism students in 2021.Data was collected by analyzing the students' test text using the document checklist. Let it be, there are six uses to be seen, the answers being what, who, where, when why and how. The results showed that out of 16 news tests taken by students, only 6 students fully answered factor 5w 1h. While the other 10 people did not answer all the items 5w 1h in their article, 2 people did not answer how, 4 people did not answer why, 1 person did not answer who, 4 people did not answer when. Meanwhile, everyone answers what and where. The data reveal why these ten news reports were incomplete, because their reports focused not on a single event but on two or three events that they mentioned in their reports. These students do not start the newsletter with important information but discuss other related topics besides current events. As a result, the discussion in the newsletter is not focused and therefore the 5w 1h factor is no longer taken into account.

The impacts of economy policy uncertainty on peer effects of firms R&D investment: Based on LDA machine learning and regression statistical modeling approach.

The Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model is used to extract the text themes of newspaper news and construct the Chinese Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) Index. On this basis, based on the relevant data of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2020, this paper empirically analyzes the impact of EPU on peer effects of firms R&D investment, and finds that EPU will aggravate the peer effects of firms R&D investment. Furthermore, the moderating effect of manager's motivation to maintain reputation on the process of EPU influencing the peer effects of firms R&D investment was tested, and the mechanism of EPU influencing the peer effects of firms R&D investment through financial frictions was verified.

Informed consent and trial prioritization for clinical studies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Stakeholder experiences and viewpoints.

Very little is known about the practice-oriented challenges and potential response strategies for effective and efficient translation of informed consent and study prioritization in times of a pandemic. This stakeholder interview study aimed to identify the full spectrum of challenges and potential response strategies for informed consent and study prioritization in a pandemic setting. We performed semi-structured interviews with German stakeholders involved in clinical research during the COVID-19 pandemic. We continued sampling and thematic text analysis of interview transcripts until thematic saturation of challenges and potential response strategies was reached. We conducted 21 interviews with investigators, oversight bodies, funders and research support units. For the first topic informed consent we identified three main themes: consent challenges, impact of consent challenges on clinical research, and potential strategies for consent challenges. For the second topic prioritization of clinical studies, we identified two main themes: perceived benefit of prioritization and potential strategies for prioritization. All main themes are further specified with subthemes. A supplementary table provides original quotes from the interviews for all subthemes. Potential response strategies for challenges with informed consent and study prioritization partly share common ground. High quality procedures for study prioritization, for example, seem to be a core response strategy in dealing with informed consent challenges. Especially in a research environment with particularly high uncertainty regarding potential treatment effects and further limitations for valid informed consent should the selection of clinical trials be very well justified from a scientific, medical, and ethics viewpoint.

Mathematical naming and explaining in teaching talk: Noticing work with two groups of mathematics teachers

Research shows the salient place of mathematical teaching talk, including the mathematical-linguistic practices of naming and explaining, in the enactment of students’ mathematical talk and learning with understanding in the classroom. Our study was developed to examine the noticing of two groups of secondary-school mathematics teachers in one-day workshops with tasks about these practices. The two workshops were mathematically content-specific, with teaching and learning accounts and prompts aimed at guiding focused attention to naming and explaining in the teaching of linear equations and probability. Thematic text analyses led to identify three foci of the two groups’ noticing: (i) missing practices of mathematical naming in own teaching talk; (ii) relative impact of mathematical explaining in teaching talk; and (iii) tensions around mathematical naming and explaining in teaching talk. Our results show that the social construction of teacher noticing is a feature of noticing development that can be documented in the context of one-day workshops. Whereas time for individual thinking and responses to the tasks created a context of support for noticing development, participation in the group discussions allowed the teachers to notice nuances of mathematical naming and explaining in teaching talk unaddressed in the task prompts. The group discussions thus amplified and opened up the opportunities to develop some focused noticing on the content of the workshops, specifically in connection with the teachers’ own teaching practice.

Healthcare staff’s perspectives on long-acting injectable buprenorphine treatment: a qualitative interview study

BackgroundLong-acting injectable buprenorphine (LAIB) formulations are a novel treatment approach in opioid agonist treatment (OAT), which provide patients with a steady dose administered weekly or monthly and thus reduce the need for frequent clinic visits. Several studies have analyzed patient experiences of LAIB but the perspective of OAT staff is unknown. This study aimed to explore how healthcare staff working in OAT clinics in Sweden perceive and manage treatment with LAIB.MethodsIndividual qualitative interviews were conducted with OAT physicians (n = 10) in tandem with nine focus group sessions with OAT nurses and other staff categories (n = 41). The data was analyzed with thematic text analysis.ResultsFive central themes were identified in the data: (1) advantages and disadvantages of LAIB, (2) patient categories that may or may not need LAIB, (3) patients’ degrees of medication choice, (4) keeping tabs, control and treatment alliance, and (5) LAIB’s impact on risk and enabling environments in OAT. Overall staff found more advantages than disadvantages with LAIB and considered that patients with ongoing substance use and low adherence were most likely to benefit from LAIB. However, less frequent visits were viewed as problematic in terms of developing a treatment alliance and being able to keep tabs on patients’ clinical status. Clinics differed regarding patients' degrees of choice in medication, which varied from limited to extensive. LAIB affected both risk and enabling environments in OAT.ConclusionsLAIB may strengthen the enabling environment in OAT for some patients by reducing clinic visits, exposure to risk environments, and the pressure to divert medication. A continued discussion about the prerequisites and rationale for LAIB implementation is needed in policy and practice.

Academic Librarian Search Committee Members Identify Inclusivity Concerns with On-Campus Interview Practices

A Review of: Houk, K. & Neilson, J. (2023). Inclusive hiring in academic libraries: A qualitative analysis of attitudes and reflections of search committee members. College and Research Libraries, 84(4), 568-588. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.84.4.568 Objective – To understand how academic librarian search committee members’ perceptions and attitudes affect the equitability and inclusiveness of the on-campus interview process. Design – Thematic text analysis of open-ended responses to short-answer questions from an online survey. Setting – Online survey conducted between February and March of 2021. Subjects – 166 academic librarians who had served on hiring committees for academic librarians in North America between 2016 and 2020. Methods – Participants for the 33-question survey were recruited through several academic library listservs and social media postings on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. The researchers first individually reviewed and coded all responses for short answer survey questions, then reviewed the codes together. Finally, a thematic map was developed after the researchers reached a consensus on their shared approach to coding and generating clusters of meanings. Main Results – Six major clusters were identified through thematic coding of participants’ text responses concerning their experiences of on-campus interview practices as hiring committee members. These themes represented challenges to the inclusiveness of academic librarian searches, and included search committees’ treatment of the interview process as either intentional or situational tests (1), reliance on the ambiguously defined selection criteria of fit (2), experience with varying levels of commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, antiracism, and accessibility (DEIAA) values (3), frustration with prevalence of institutional bureaucracy throughout the hiring process (4), and uneven adoptions of inclusive hiring (5) or reflective practices (6). The researchers also noted a common respondent mistake of misinterpreting equal (i.e., identical) treatment of candidates as evidence of equitable interview practices. Conclusion – Findings from this study highlighted the importance of academic institutions and hiring committees adopting reflective practices to critically and intentionally incorporate DEIAA-informed practices in planning and conducting academic librarian searches. The authors also stressed the need to reduce possible biases in hiring practices favoring candidates who conforms to White, ableist, and heteronormative culture and values. Examples of these efforts included considering the necessity of each interview element for assessing candidate performances, proactively ensuring full accessibility of the interview itinerary, and operationalizing the definition of “fit” in assessing candidates’ abilities.

Improving general practice management of patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain: Interdisciplinarity, coherence, and concerns.

Management of patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain (CMP) remains a challenge in general practice. The general practitioner (GP) often experiences diagnostic uncertainty despite frequently referring patients with CMP to specialized departments. Therefore, it remains imperative to gain insights on how to optimize and reframe the current setup for the management of patients with CMP. The objective was to explore GP's perspectives on the challenges, needs, and visions for improving the management of patients with CMP. A qualitative study with co-design using the future workshop approach. Eight GPs participated in the future workshop (five females). Insights and visions emerged from the GP's discussions and sharing of their experiences in managing patients with CMP. The audio-recorded data were subjected to thematic text analysis. The thematic analysis revealed four main themes, including (1) challenges with current pain management, (2) barriers to pain management, (3) the need for a biopsychosocial perspective, and (4) solutions and visions. All challenges are related to the complexity and diagnostic uncertainty for this patient population. GPs experienced that the patients' biomedical understanding of their pain was a barrier for management and underlined the need for a biopsychosocial approach when managing the patients. The GPs described taking on the role of coordinators for their patients with CMP but could feel ill-equipped to handle diagnostic uncertainty. An interdisciplinary unit was recommended as a possible solution to introduce a biopsychosocial approach for the examination, diagnosis, and management of the patient's CMP. The complexity and diagnostic uncertainty of patients with CMP warrants a revision of the current setup. Establishing an interdisciplinary unit using a biopsychosocial approach was recommended as an option to improve the current management for patients with CMP.

"My Goal is…to get Through the Day Without Pain": A Qualitative Study on Chronic Pain Experiences and Treatment Needs Among Child Caregiving Women.

We aimed to understand connections between pain, caregiving, physical and behavioral health treatment needs, and motivations for prescription opioid use among child caregiving women with chronic pain. We conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 12 women (average age 48 years; 58% Black) in child caregiving roles, including women who were pregnant or trying to become pregnant and were caring for children or grandchildren < 18 years, and who received treatment at an outpatient pain management clinic. We used thematic text analysis to identify qualitative themes related to caregiving, pain, treatment, substance use, coping strategies, and sources of support. A diverse sample of women reported high levels of stress and pain, substance use, interpersonal violence, depression, and financial strain. Most described difficulties at work, interacting with children or grandchildren, and engaging routine, daily activities due to their pain. Most indicated that they spent less time with family and friends due to their pain and had limited sources of support to help them navigate both caregiving and pain. Many described barriers to receiving appropriate healthcare, including prescription opioids, due to stigma or logistics, though most also reported positive healthcare experiences. Women also reported added daily-life, physical, mental health, and interpersonal stressors and difficulty navigating the healthcare system to receive needed care. For women with chronic pain in child caregiver roles, results highlight the importance of care tailored to the physical needs of child caregiving and of trauma-informed approaches given the prevalence of comorbid conditions and trauma.

Children’s Voices on the COVID-19 Pandemic as Presented in Swedish Junior and Daily Newspapers

This study focuses on children’s voices as they were presented in Swedish newspapers during the COVID-19 pandemic. It explores the ways in which journalists featured children’s experiences of everyday life during a time of crisis. A descriptive, thematic text analysis of 83 articles resulted in four prominent themes: children’s voices as a mouthpiece for or against school closure, children as cocreators of a new normal daily life, children as responsible and caring citizens, and COVID-19 as a magnifying glass for existing vulnerabilities in everyday life. The selection and representation of children’s viewpoints was adult led and limited, and the study thus calls for further research on media constructions of children/childhood and related consequences.

A Contrastive Study on the Thematic Structure Functions of English and Arabic Short Stories

Charles Dickens’s (1909) “Little Dorrit” and Al Tayeb Saleh’s (1997) “Nakhla Ala Al Jadwal” were the subject of this investigation. Using Halliday and Matthiessen’s (2014) model of thematic categorizations and functions, this research paper examined thematic structure functions in relation to Dickens’s and Saleh’s short stories. Hence, 234 English and 304 Arabic clauses were manually extracted from the short stories and analyzed regarding the proposed framework. The findings revealed that the use of topical themes was the highest and the interpersonal was the lowest in frequency while the textual themes were at some point in between the topical and interpersonal ones. The comparison also had no bearing on the topical themes because they were identical, but the textual and interpersonal themes recorded distinct results. In Arabic, the utilization of textual themes was higher but the implementation of interpersonal themes was more employed and exercised in English. Each of which indicates multifarious reasons and functions to be regarded to the author’s vantage point.

The Answering of Wh-Questions In Newswriting Class of Students Academic Year 2021 Universitas PGRI Sumatera Barat

The purpose of this study was to understand how journalism students apply the 5w 1h response in their news writing. This study is a qualitative study. The data source of this study is the thematic text in the mid-semester exam of journalism students in 2021.Data was collected by analyzing the students' test text using the document checklist. Let it be, there are six uses to be seen, the answers being what, who, where, when, why and how. The results showed that out of 16 news tests taken by students, only 6 students fully answered factor 5w 1h. While the other 10 people did not answer all the items 5w 1h in their article, 2 people did not answer how, 4 people did not answer why, 1 person did not answer who, 4 people did not answer when. Meanwhile, everyone answers what and where. The data reveal why these ten news reports were incomplete, because their reports focused not on a single event but on two or three events that they mentioned in their reports. These students do not start the newsletter with important information but discuss other related topics besides current events. As a result, the discussion in the newsletter is not focused and therefore the 5w 1h factor is no longer taken into account.

The Dimensions of Timeshare: Evidence from Trip Advisor

This study examines timeshare product dimensions based on online information on TripAdvisor. Using Leximancer, 57 main concepts and 11 major textual themes were identified. Further analysis revealed seven main dimensions: points, vacation, resorts, fees, sales, company, and deal. The most relevant theme was points, referring to the recent evolution of the timeshare product to a point-based system. The findings provide unique insight into a substantial segment of the tourism industry, differing from extant survey-based research. Results indicate that timeshare companies should not overlook information shared online as it relates to their image -- 899 posts (42%) of 2089 show negative perceptions towards timeshare. As a relatively under-researched field, this may provide a starting point for future research in this area.