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Proportional Frameworks

Proportional measures produce raw scores that represent the portion of analyzed text made up of words tied to a psychological construct. Frameworks such as LIWC, LIWC Extension, Emotions (SALLEE), Temporal and Orientation, Cognition, and Toxicity all work this way by scanning text word by word, checking against dictionary categories, and incrementing relevant scales. While SALLEE’s sentiment scores range from -1.0 to +1.0, other proportional measures always fall between 0 and 1. These measures are not normalized or baselined against a dataset; they directly reflect the observed proportion of category words.

📄️ LIWC

Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) is the gold standard for research in the field of Language Psychology. Created by Dr. James W. Pennebaker at the University of Texas, the software was originally used to examine the therapeutic value of writing by analyzing the frequency of psychologically-relevant linguistic features of text. Since its inception, the various LIWC dimensions have been validated and addressed in published research, and LIWC has been the basis for over 25,000 academic publications in a variety of fields covering topics such as power dynamics, thinking styles, motivations, communication dynamics,personality, consumer behavior, group dynamics, culture, and interpersonal relationships, among others.