journal-bmcPublicHealth-cord


Introduction

This is a Distant Reader "study carrel", a set of structured data intended to help the student, researcher, or scholar use & understand a corpus.

This study carrel was created on 2021-05-30 by Eric Morgan <emorgan@nd.edu>. The carrel was created using the Distant Reader cord process, and the input was the result of a query applied to a local mirror of CORD, a data set of scholarly articles on the topic of COVID-19. The actual query was: facet_journal:"BMC Public Health". The results of this query were saved in a cache and transformed into a set of plain text files. All of the analysis -- "reading" -- has been done against these plain text files. For example, a short narrative report has been created. This Web page is a more verbose version of that report.

All study carrels are self-contained -- no Internet connection is necessary to use them. Download this carrel for offline reading. The carrel is made up of many subdirectories and data files. The manifest describes each one in greater detail.

Size

There are 73 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 139,297 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 4,974 words long. If you dig deeper, then you might want to save yourself some time by reading a shorter item. On the other hand, if your desire is for more detail, then you might consider reading a longer item. The following charts illustrate the overall size of the carrel.

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histogram of sizes
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box plot of sizes

Readability

On a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is very difficult and 100 is very easy, the documents have an average readability score of 47. Consequently, if you want to read something more simplistic, then consider a document with a higher score. If you want something more specialized, then consider something with a lower score. The following charts illustrate the overall readability of the carrel.

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histogram of readability
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box plot of readability

Word Frequencies

By merely counting & tabulating the frequency of individual words or phrases, you can begin to get an understanding of the carrel's "aboutness". Excluding "stop words", some of the more frequent words include:

health, influenza, study, public, pandemic, data, disease, risk, cases, among, also, care, outbreak, analysis, control, one, information, surveillance, using, may, infection, social, knowledge, patients, reported, used, research, based, level, time, community, studies, response, model, results, infectious, population, system, survey, related, use, factors, countries, review, hiv, vaccination, high, number, respondents, i

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Twentieth anniversary of the European Union health mandate: taking stock of perceived achievements, failures and missed opportunities – a qualitative study, Economic analysis of pandemic influenza mitigation strategies for five pandemic severity categories, and What makes health systems resilient against infectious disease outbreaks and natural hazards? Results from a scoping review.

The most frequent two-word phrases (bigrams) include:

public health, pandemic influenza, health care, infectious disease, respiratory syndrome, hand hygiene, infectious diseases, health literacy, influenza pandemic, hiv aids, influenza vaccination, psychological distress, health system, sickness absence, hong kong, middle east, world health, seasonal influenza, risk perception, avian influenza, health organization, acute respiratory, east respiratory, behaviour change, health systems, mental health, severe acute, disease control, health behaviors, general public, pandemic preparedness, additional file, one health, systematic review, sierra leone, risk factors, evd survivors, data collection, ev cases, bmc public, united states, health doi, doc id, cord uid, social distancing, syndrome coronavirus, healthcare workers, confirmed cases, social determinants, surveillance system

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are Twentieth anniversary of the European Union health mandate: taking stock of perceived achievements, failures and missed opportunities – a qualitative study A systematic review to identify areas of enhancements of pandemic simulation models for operational use at provincial and local levels, and Perceived utility and feasibility of pathogen genomics for public health practice: a survey among public health professionals working in the field of infectious diseases, Belgium, 2019.

While often deemed superficial or sophomoric, rudimentary frequencies and their associated "word clouds" can be quite insightful:

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unigrams
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bigrams

Keywords

Sets of keywords -- statistically significant words -- can be enumerated by comparing the relative frequency of words with the number of times the words appear in an entire corpus. Some of the most statistically significant keywords in the carrel include:

health, h1n1, pandemic, influenza, china, public, hiv, covid-19, practice, vaccination, taiwan, sars, mers, kong, hong, evd, ebola, behavior, toronto, thailand, study, salmonella, psychological, pathogen, outbreak, model, middle, ili, east, disease, datum, australia, aids, aboriginal, youth, yemen, woman, wildlife, wgs, welfare, wales, violence, vietnam, uscdc, union, tlx, tic, theory, system, surveillance

And now word clouds really begin to shine:

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keywords

Topic Modeling

Topic modeling is another popular approach to connoting the aboutness of a corpus. If the study carrel could be summed up in a single word, then that word might be health, and Factors influencing psychological distress during a disease epidemic: Data from Australia's first outbreak of equine influenza is most about that word.

If the study carrel could be summed up in three words ("topics") then those words and their significantly associated titles include:

  1. health - Twentieth anniversary of the European Union health mandate: taking stock of perceived achievements, failures and missed opportunities – a qualitative study
  2. influenza - Economic analysis of pandemic influenza mitigation strategies for five pandemic severity categories
  3. influenza - Examining the application of behaviour change theories in the context of infectious disease outbreaks and emergency response: a review of reviews

If the study carrel could be summed up in five topics, and each topic were each denoted with three words, then those topics and their most significantly associated files would be:

  1. health, study, knowledge - An assessment of Ebola-related stigma and its association with informal healthcare utilisation among Ebola survivors in Sierra Leone: a cross-sectional study
  2. health, public, pandemic - Examining the application of behaviour change theories in the context of infectious disease outbreaks and emergency response: a review of reviews
  3. influenza, pandemic, health - Economic analysis of pandemic influenza mitigation strategies for five pandemic severity categories
  4. influenza, vaccination, health - Establishing seasonal and alert influenza thresholds in Morocco
  5. health, hand, study - Education differences in sickness absence and the role of health behaviors: a prospective twin study

Moreover, the totality of the study carrel's aboutness, can be visualized with the following pie chart:

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topic model

Noun & Verbs

Through an analysis of your study carrel's parts-of-speech, you are able to answer question beyonds aboutness. For example, a list of the most frequent nouns helps you answer what questions; "What is discussed in this collection?":

health, influenza, study, data, pandemic, disease, cases, risk, care, analysis, outbreak, infection, surveillance, information, patients, studies, knowledge, level, time, community, response, control, results, population, respondents, countries, factors, system, research, model, vaccination, number, people, survey, participants, age, review, diseases, years, use, virus, epidemic, models, treatment, authors, measures, groups, individuals, transmission, case

An enumeration of the verbs helps you learn what actions take place in a text or what the things in the text do. Very frequently, the most common lemmatized verbs are "be", "have", and "do"; the more interesting verbs usually occur further down the list of frequencies:

using, included, reported, based, identified, provided, showed, related, increasing, found, developed, associated, compared, conducted, follow, perceived, makes, indicated, reducing, need, consider, gave, improve, took, participating, assess, address, working, regarding, received, involve, suggests, occurs, implementing, required, see, determined, collected, supporting, known, confirmed, led, presented, affects, examining, describe, emerging, remain, influencing, contributed

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nouns
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verbs

Proper Nouns

An extraction of proper nouns helps you determine the names of people and places in your study carrel.

Health, HIV, China, H1N1, SARS, MERS, EVD, AIDS, Ebola, COVID-19, Influenza, Public, EU, TB, Table, Australia, East, National, Disease, World, Hong, CDC, Kong, South, Middle, Organization, GDD, Taiwan, Control, Korea, ICT, ILI, A, Salmonella, United, WHO, University, Fig, Africa, Thailand, Research, B, European, April, States, Prevention, Ministry, IPV, CI, BMC

An analysis of personal pronouns enables you to answer at least two questions: 1) "What, if any, is the overall gender of my study carrel?", and 2) "To what degree are the texts in my study carrel self-centered versus inclusive?"

we, their, it, they, our, its, them, i, you, themselves, your, us, my, her, itself, his, me, she, he, one, oneself, him, ourselves, myself, himself, herself, em, yourself, w3catjj3, transmissionthey, themself, inclusion/, https://thebest.shinyapps.io/seasonalpathogen/.authors, heals

Below are words cloud of your study carrel's proper & personal pronouns.

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proper nouns
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pronouns

Adjectives & Verbs

Learning about a corpus's adjectives and adverbs helps you answer how questions: "How are things described and how are things done?" An analysis of adjectives and adverbs also points to a corpus's overall sentiment. "In general, is my study carrel positive or negative?"

public, social, infectious, high, important, significant, higher, general, respiratory, human, different, seasonal, severe, first, local, non, low, specific, global, psychological, key, medical, effective, current, available, national, clinical, many, likely, new, additional, total, economic, systematic, cross, primary, possible, lower, aboriginal, several, previous, secondary, multiple, acute, individual, positive, preventive, future, early, chronic

also, however, well, therefore, significantly, respectively, often, particularly, especially, even, less, rather, still, highly, statistically, prior, first, furthermore, relatively, previously, specifically, potentially, commonly, moreover, approximately, generally, frequently, together, strongly, least, directly, finally, similarly, culturally, much, always, additionally, better, n't, mainly, likely, just, currently, nearly, fully, almost, effectively, initially, overall, worldwide

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adjectives
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adverbs

Next steps

There is much more to a study carrel than the things outlined above. Use this page's menubar to navigate and explore in more detail. There you will find additional features & functions including: ngrams, parts-of-speech, grammars, named entities, topic modeling, a simple search interface, etc.

Again, study carrels are self-contained. Download this carrel for offline viewing and use.

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