Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #118064

Thomas F. Gordon, PhD¹, Priscilla Murphy, PhD², Brooke Layne Hardison, MPH¹, and Maria de Fatima Oliveira, MS³. (1) Department of Public Health, Temple University, Vivacqua Hall, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19122, 215-204-1366, thomas.gordon@temple.edu, (2) Strategic and Organizational Communication, Temple University, Weiss Hall, 2nd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19122, (3) Mass Media & Communication, Temple University, School of Communications & Theater, Annenberg Hall, Philadelphia, PA 19122

American Legacy Foundation website contains a library database of over 7 million documents related to marketing, manufacturing and scientific research of tobacco industry products. Many of these documents were released through the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement or similar litigation, and provide an important view into tobacco industry policies and communications. Although the site provides basic keyword search capability, the ability to do sophisticated textual analyses of these documents is limited. This session discusses options for "data mining" and "computer assisted textual analysis" of extremely large databases using specialized software. Search strategies will be discussed and the primary software options for sophisticated analyses will be compared. The research team involved in this project, working through a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has not only been conducting analyses of existing software, but has developed specialized software for linking to, retrieving, and storing document samples for analysis. Examples will be presented from analyses of the Master Settlement Agreement documents to (1) demonstrate document sampling, retrieval, and storage; (2) show analysis options related to retrieved documents; and (3) illustrate options for graphic presentation of results.

Learning Objectives: Participants at this session will

1. Understand the nature and structure of the American Legacy web site and the general characteristics of the millions of tobacco settlement documents housed in this valuable database.
2. Learn search strategies to "mine" the database for (
3. key content; (
4. important events; (
5. specified timelines.
6. Be able to identify software packages for computer-assisted textual analysis of large volumes of text /documents, and specify their advantages & disadvantages.
7. Be shown examples of large sample textual analyses using the specialized software packages.

Keywords: Tobacco Settlement, Research

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.