Word Trends (Frequencies of Words)

Using Code Trends, you can analyze where and how often codes have been applied in texts.

When analyzing a single document, the text is divided into sections of equal length, and the frequency of selected words in each section is visualized in a line chart:

If you call Word Trends for multiple text documents, you can analyze how the use of words changes across the texts. Word Trends for multiple texts is particularly useful for time series analysis where each document represents a point in time.

Word Trends steps for single documents

Open the text document for which you want to analyze Word Trends.
Select Visual Tools > Word Trends > Single Document from the main menu. The Word Trends window will open.

Tip: Alternatively, you can call up Word Trends by right-clicking on a document in the “Document System” (using the Trends menu item). If you have created a word cloud for a single document, an icon will appear in its menu bar that allows you to call up Word Trends directly for the document for which you created the word cloud.

Word Trends steps for multiple documents

Select Visual Tools > Word Trends > Multiple Documents from the main menu.
You can select between comparing documents, document groups, and document sets. Select the desired unit of comparison and specify which documents, groups, or sets to include in the analysis.
Once you select your desired unit of analysis, the Word Trends line chart will be updated.

Tip: Alternatively, you can call up Word Trends by right-clicking on a multi-selection of documents in the “Document System” (using the Trends menu item).

Add, pin, and delete words

The most frequent words in the document are listed in the legend on the left side of the Word Trends window. To add words to the analysis, type the word in the text field above the legend. If you input single letters, all words within the selected document(s) beginning with that letter will be listed for selection.

Hovering over a listed word reveals options to pin or delete it. To delete it, click the red 'x' symbol.

Changing any search settings in the toolbar automatically refreshes the listed words. To keep a word permanently displayed in the legend, even after adjusting settings, you can pin it. To pin a word, click the green pin icon. To unpin a word, simply click the pin icon again.

Word frequencies

Click on Word Frequencies in the Start menu tab to open a window displaying a table of all words found in the text and their frequencies.

Options for analysis and presentation

The Start menu tab provides numerous options to customize the analysis and the results display:

Case Sensitivity – When enabled, Word Trends differentiates single words additonally based on their letter capitalization.
Ignore Numbers – When this option is enabled, numbers are ignored when listing the most frequent words after opening Word Trends window. Furthermore, numbers cannot be selected for display by entering them in the text field.
Base Form (Lemmatize) – If enabled, all analyzed words are reduced to their base form, i.e., “go”, “went”, and “gone” are considered as the same word (“go”). More information about the lemma lists used can be found here. If a word has been lemmatized, you can see a list of all its lemmatized forms in the tooltip by hovering your mouse over the word.
Apply Stop Word List – If enabled, the words from the currently selected stop word list will be ignored when listing the most frequent words after opening Word Trends window. Furthermore, the excluded words cannot be selected for display by entering them in the text field.
Scale – Switch between absolute and relative frequencies. Both the absolute and relative frequencies refer to the respective section.
Sections [only for single document] – Select the number of sections to be visualized.
Display Document Names as Labels [only for multiple documents] – If enabled, the document names are displayed instead of consecutive numbers.
Colors – Choose between different color schemes for the display.

Please note: The division of a single document into sections is done with the original text, regardless of the selected options “Ignore Numbers” and “Apply Stop Word List”.

List search hits

Click on a node in the chart to get a listing of search hits in that section or document:

Tip: Click on a line in the listing to display the word in the “Document Browser”.

Store results in a QTT worksheet

In the Questions – Themes – Theories window of MAXQDA, you can collect and comment on all the important results of your project. In the upper right corner of the Start menu tab of Word Trends, click on the icon Send to QTT Worksheet, to store the results in a new or existing worksheet. The current display will be saved as an image.

Export and print results

On the top right of the Word Trends window, you will find various options to export the current view, for example, to insert it into your results report:

Copy Display – Copies the current view to the clipboard so that you can paste Word Trends into a software of your choice, for example, by using Ctrl-/cmd+V.
Export – Exports the current view as a graphic file.

By clicking on the printer symbol, also at the top right, the current view can be printed directly.

MAXQDA 24 Manual