Frequently Asked Questions General Information 1. Does DICTION run on a Mac? A Mac version is in our plans but is not yet available. Currently, DICTION runs on Windows on a PC. 2. Can DICTION run on a Mac which uses the Windows operating system? No, DICTION only runs on a PC using Windows. The file system of DICTION is incompatible with the Mac file system and will not function properly. 3. Can I try out DICTION before purchasing it? Yes, a fully operational Demo lets you experiment with all of the program s options, although it restricts your analysis to the sample texts built into the demo. 4. What are the software licensing terms and conditions for DICTION? DICTION is sold with a single-system, end-user license. That is, each purchased software program can only be run on a single computer. If you want to run it on multiple computers, you will need to purchase additional software. 5. Can multiple people use DICTION? Multiple people can use DICTION on a single system by identifying their individual projects. 6. How have researchers used DICTION in the past? Go to www.dictionsoftware.com for hundreds of studies (under DICTION Research ). DICTION Features 7. What is distinctive about DICTION? DICTION employs a 10,000 word search routine that can be used with any kind of English language texts. In addition, it lets users take advantage of a normative database of over 50,000 text files across 50 different message types that have been collected over 40 years of research. DICTION offers users the flexibility to create up to 30 custom dictionaries of words that are specific to their areas of research, for example, for sentiment analysis. 8. Do I have to use DICTION s normative database? No, a user can either use DICTION s norming procedures or adopt their own approaches by using raw scores.
9. How does DICTION analyze a text? It mostly uses dictionaries or word lists. See all of DICTION s search terms by going to Edit and then View DICTION s Dictionaries. 10. Does DICTION look for phrases in a text? No, it focuses on individual or hyphenated words only. Therefore, if a dictionary contains the word "third-quarter" it will look for that exact spelling. If the text lists "third quarter" (without the hyphen) it will be identified as two separate words. DICTION treats a word as anything that starts and ends with a blank space. 11. Can DICTION be used to analyze text in a language other than English? The dictionaries and norms of DICTION are based on English. Custom dictionaries could be created for any language; however, you would not be able to utilize the norms for those dictionaries. 12. Does DICTION distinguish between upper and lower case letters? No, dictionaries are not case sensitive. 13. What does the insistence score measure? The insistence score is a measure of the extent to which nouns or noun-derived adjectives are heavily repeated in a text. Thus it becomes a measure of the extent to which a text "stays on topic." 14. What is the Elephant? The Elephant is the tool in DICTION that collects and stores the information used in determining the insistence score. During the process of analyzing a passage, DICTION asks the user to identify those noun or noun-derived adjectives in the passage. The Elephant stores these designations and thereby the user need not do so. In case that mistakes are made, the program does let you edit the list as explained in the manual. 15. In going through the insistence score decision process, should I choose eligible for any word that can possibly be used as a noun or is the context of the word in the text important? That is, many words can be used as nouns or verbs, e.g. He ate the filling. or She was filling the pan. If the word can be used as a noun, it should be treated as a noun and selected. 16. Do the standard dictionaries account for both British and American spelling (e.g. behaviour/behavior)? Yes, the standard dictionaries contain words with both British and American spelling. 17. Can I compare really long texts to really short texts and be sure I get equivalent information?
By default, DICTION provides a 500-word average for all long texts; for short texts, it extrapolates the data to a 500-word norm. DICTION also gives you many other options for processing large texts (e.g., by automatically breaking them up into 500-word units). Select Processing Options to make your selection. Getting Started 18. What should I do first when starting-up DICTION? When the Welcome screen comes up, click on Learn about DICTION. See also our Product Tour and our DICTION manual at www.dictionsoftware.com. 19. How do I get started with DICTION? Click on Create a new Project and give the file a label. When the Properties screen comes up, click on Add folder or Add files and then select the text folder or file(s) you want to examine. 20. How do I analyze my text? Select Run Analysis from the Welcome screen. Or select File from the top menu bar then select Analyze from the drop down menu Or double click on your input file and click on Analyze. 21. What do I do when the Insistence Words screen pops up? Just select each noun or noun-derived adjective and then click OK. 22. How do I create a custom dictionary for my own specialized searches? Select Global User Dictionaries or Project Setting Options from the Project Explorer window. You can import an existing dictionary or create a new one. To create a new dictionary, label the file with a unique name. Note: File names cannot contain spaces or blanks. Type the words you want to search for one word at a time or as a list of words separated by comma. Note: DICTION only accepts single or hyphenated words in its dictionaries. 23. DICTION turns a verbal text into numbers. How do I know what the numbers mean? The program reports your results in the Report Viewer window. Select the tab, Project Report View, to see the individual scores of all of your passages for each of the variables. Select the tab, File Report Viewer, to see how an individual passage compares to thousands of other passages, thereby letting you know what s special about your text.
Interpreting Results 24. Why don t the calculations for the variables simply add up? Simply adding and subtracting the raw scores doesn t work. DICTION always standardizes each score against its normative database of 50,000 texts before doing any calculations. For example, simply calculating Optimism using its formula [praise+satisfaction+ inspiration]-[blame+hardship+denial] will not give you the proper results unless standardization procedures are used. 25. Why does DICTION not report raw scores for its built-in search categories? Word frequencies produce notoriously high variances and flat distributions, especially when English language data in a large corpus containing multiple speakers are processed. To correct for this, DICTION extrapolates all passages to a 500-word standard, thereby normalizing the scores and permitting users to confidently compare one passage to another. 26. Why are DICTION s scores sometimes fractionated (e.g., a Satisfaction score of 1.75 or a Praise score of 0.48)? Fractionated integers or integers of less than 1 are the natural result of the statistical corrections DICTION applies to its results based on (1) extrapolations to a standard passage-size of 500 words and (2) application of the norms built-into its database of 50,000 previously processed passages. 27. How are DICTION s Master Variables calculated? The program begins by converting all subaltern variables to z-scores. For example, in calculating Optimism, DICTION standardizes six variables and then adds or subtracts them (e.g., [praise + satisfaction + inspiration) - (blame + hardship + denial]), adds a constant of 50, and then provides a slight statistical correction by referencing DICTION s normative databank. The outcome is this: Any study reporting DICTION results can be directly compared to any other study reporting DICTION results, making it more dependable than programs reporting raw scores only. 28. Can I reformulate the DICTION Master Variables? No, the formulas for the Master Variables cannot be changed. See 29 on creating custom master variables. 29. Can I create my own Master Variables? Yes. You can use the variables to create new Master Variables based on the formula of your choosing. To do so, you must first standardize the variables using
a standard statistical package such as SPAA or SAS. Then you can use those scores to calculate your formula. 30. What processing options should I select if want to create my own master variables? It is recommended that you select the Long Option: Averaged or Short Option Extrapolated to analyze your text. 31. How are the normal range of scores in DICTION s File Report Viewer calculated? The hi and lo scores represent +1 s.d. and -1 s.d. from the mean. The means are derived from analyzing some 50,000 passages drawn from a wide variety of English-language texts from all sectors business, politics, law, science, fiction, media, etc. 32. Can I get a more fine-grained analysis of the texts I want to analyze? Yes, DICTION lets you compare your text to some forty different types of discourse, including technical and business documents, entertainment texts, news reports, ads, speeches, and literary passages. See Norm under Default Processing Options Common Problems 33. What happens if I have problems with my order (e.g., can t download the software or my payment is incorrect)? DICTION uses RegNow to distribute the software and collect payment. If you have problems associated with your order, send an email to ordersupport@regnow.com. 34. What happens if I run into problems with the software after buying the program? The DICTION staff cannot help with research or conceptual issues, but if the program malfunctions write to us at help@dictionsoftware.com or call (512) 394-8891. 35. I get an Error message or "Java.lang.NullPointerException" message when I analyze my data. Likely reasons include: Isolating the problem to either naming convention for files or custom dictionaries If this error occurs and you have created custom dictionaries, run the program without any using any custom dictionaries. If the error still occurs, it is likely related to the file naming convention. If it does not occur, the error is likely associated with your custom dictionaries. See below for possible corrective steps. Naming conventions for files: There is a problem with one or more of your input files so DICTION cannot analyze them. Check the input files from the list in the Project Explorer window
on the left to see if any are blank. Click on the file and its contents should be displayed in the Text Viewer window on the upper right. If no text is displayed, that file has an error in it and could not be processed. Sometimes the file cannot be input because of special characters in the file name. Check the name of the file to make sure it does not contain any special characters such as, & or '. If so, rename those files using only spaces or dashes as special characters. Delete the files with errors in their names and input them again. Naming conventions for custom dictionaries: Custom dictionary names cannot contain any spaces or blanks. Replace spaces in the dictionary name with _. (e.g., Higher Education should be Higher_Education). Unreadable characters in the file contents: Some files, such as pdf, may have unreadable images or special characters in them. Convert the files to.txt files, which will remove any special characters in the file contents that could potentially cause problems.