[Using content analysis in cross-cultural psychosomatic research].

The Gottschalk-Gleser-analysis, a content-analytical technique, measures anxious and aggressive affects. For decades this technique was primarily and widely implemented in psychosomatic research. Today, this technique is offered in numerous languages. Since this technique is time consuming in application and analysis, computer software has been developed for English (Psychiatric Content Analysis and Diagnosis, PCAD 2000) as well as for German contents (Dresdner Angstwörterbuch, DAW). This study compares the anxiety scale of both versions in order to evaluate their comparability in cross-cultural psychosomatic studies. The English and German version of 96 different abstracts of the German Journal for Psychotherapy, Psychosomatic Medicine and Medicine Psychology from 2003 and 2004 with a total of 31 000 words were compared. The scores of the Gottschalk-Gleser anxiety scales of both computer programs correlates between 0.21 and 0.59 (p < 0.05, only exception: shame anxiety). The means of the scores calculated by the PCAD and DAW significantly differ for all scales. Therefore, these two content analytical methods DAW and PCAD provide only limited use for cross-cultural comparisons in psychosomatic research.