Structural Criteria

There are two structural criteria which must be observed: the corpus size and its subdivision into parts.

As for the size, all T-LAB 10 tools have been tested with a 90Mb corpus, approximately equivalent to 55,000 pages in .txt format.

Limits for the minimum size require different evaluation criteria, because, under a certain threshold, the corpus size can prejudice the reliability of many statistical analyses. Just follow these simple instructions: use corpora with at least 5,000 occurrences (approximately 30 Kb); otherwise, in the case of open-ended questions, a minimum of 50 answers.

In order to be processed, a corpus can be made up of: a single text without further partitions; a single text subdivided according to criteria established by the user (for example, a book divided into chapters); a number of texts (for example, different interviews or documents) classified through the use of labels linked to as many variables or IDnumber. In any case, the corpus is subdivided into parts that must be defined by precise formal criteria.