Letters from Jenny revisited: The computer content analysis redone
Jerry W. O’Dell · Journal of Clinical Psychology · 1978
The text of Allport's Letters from Jenny was reanalyzed by computer. The analysis was accomplished by splitting the letters at Ross's death and through the use of significance tests. Surprising differences were found between Paige's (1964) results and those of the current study: We found substantially fewer words in the text than he did, and our count of number of letters written was higher. It was found that there were significantly more references to the topics of Positives, Art, Paranoid matters, Death, and Illness after Ross's death. References to Ross, Children, and Money decreased. Certain statistical and methodological problems in analysis of data of this type were commented upon.