Text Analysis under Time Pressure: Tools for humanitarian and development workers

 Persons analyzing text documents commonly mitigate time pressure through greater

• selectivity

• substitution

• reliance on computers

or any combination of those. They may bias attention to a segment of the texts to consider. They may substitute for their own reading and analysis the opinions of experts and stakeholders familiar with the texts or their objects. They may use computer programs that assist reading, comprehension, analysis and reporting, beyond the universally used applications.
This paper presents three tools suitable to assist text analysis work that humanitarian and development professionals do under time pressure. These tools are meant to be of help in two basic situations:

The purpose of this paper is to add simple productivity tools for text analysis, by publicizing existing ones and by adding one that I created. “Simple” is a relative term. As the diagram in the Summary section suggests, the suitability of the tools depends on the skills and equipment level of the intending user. Also, I assume a kind of working environment that developing country organizations will not everywhere offer for computer-supported text analysis: that the analyst actually can acquire the documents digitally.