A corpus-based analysis of high-frequency words on ICH quality guidelines in the pharmaceutical industry

This study aimed to investigate the vocabulary needs of learners in the pharmaceutical industry by analyzing the ICH Quality Guidelines and comparing the Pharmaceutical Industry Word List (PIWL) with the Academic Word List (AWL) from a previous study. The objectives were to identify the most frequent words in the ICH Quality Guidelines in the PIWL, compare academic words in the PIWL and PAWL (Heidari et al., 2020), and validate the word list through expert judgment. A corpus of 289,731 words was used, and Frequency, Range, Keyword analysis, and Lexical profiling were employed. The word list underwent expert validation by three professionals with industry experience, using rating scales (Chung & Nation, 2004). Out of the initial 145 words, 87 remained in the final PIWL. The comparison with the PAWL showed coverage of 9.30% and 10.23% for PIWL and PAWL, respectively. The study's limitations included the small corpus size, focus on quality guidelines, and exclusion of collocations. Future research should consider larger corpora, explore a broader range of pharmaceutical topics, investigate collocations, and address vocabulary needs in languages other than English. The study's findings, validated by expert judgment, have implications for educators designing specialized language programs for learners in the pharmaceutical industry