A Narrative Analysis by Text Mining Technique Using Key Graph: Similarity and Difference of a View of Oral Health and Oral Risk Cognition between Japanese Living People and Dentists

The main stakeholders in oral health management process are living people (seikatsu-sya) and dentists, the mutual awareness and understanding of them are supposed to be the indispensable basements to improve the quality of oral health treatments for both of living people and dentists. This study aims to examine the similarity and difference of a view of oral health and oral risk cognition between the main stakeholders with interview data in order to obtain a clue for generating their mutual awareness and understanding. Focusing on the method of narrative analysis, the authors discuss on the specifically process, the result, and the significance in this study. It was conducted interviews with five living people and five dentists analyzed their narratives by Key Graph which is a text mining tool. And then we arranged key concepts by KJ method, or an Affinity Diagram, which is a brainstorming tool which organizes a large number of ideas into their natural relationships. Through this analysis, the authors arranged the similarity and difference between Japanese living people´s view of oral health and oral risk cognition, and those of dentists in a table. It is observed from the table that oral risk cognitions between Japanese living people and dentists have some difference, on the other side Japanese living people´s super ordinate view of oral health and that of dentists are almost the same. This study revealed that it is desirable to apply the collaboration of Key Graph and KJ Method, such as the mechanical processing by the text-mining and the brainstorming.