The use of T-LAB in health psychology. A literature review

In the last decades, the psychological research has increased the use of informatic instruments for statistical textual analysis. T-LAB represents an example of modular software, made of a set of linguistic, statistical, and graphical instruments for textual analysis. The software includes a large number of tools and in the last years has become quite popular in different academic fields. However, precise and definite guidelines for its use in health psychology are still missing, because its use mostly depends on the research question, on the theoretical approach and from the data under analysis. The aim of the present study was to investigate praxis of application of this software in health psychology. Through a literature review of the articles which were published between 2004 and 2016 in important scientific journals (Psicologia della Salute, Journal of Health Psychology, Psychology Health & Medicine, Health Psychology Open), 17 contributions (full-text) using T-LAB were identified. Results showed a great variability in the textual materials under analysis. Many studies shared an exploratory aim (consistent with a qualitative approach) and adopted only few “popular” tools from the list that is available in T-LAB. The discussion of results provides useful implications about the possible advantages deriving from the use of statistical textual analysis and suggestions for the future.