Structural topic models for open-ended survey responses

Margaret E. Roberts, Brandon Michael Stewart, Dustin Tingley, Christopher Lucas, Jetson Leder-Luis, Shana Kushner Gadarian, Bethany Albertson, David G. Rand

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1147 Scopus citations

Abstract

Collection and especially analysis of open-ended survey responses are relatively rare in the discipline and when conducted are almost exclusively done through human coding. We present an alternative, semiautomated approach, the structural topic model (STM) (Roberts, Stewart, and Airoldi 2013; Roberts et al. 2013), that draws on recent developments in machine learning based analysis of textual data. A crucial contribution of the method is that it incorporates information about the document, such as the author's gender, political affiliation, and treatment assignment (if an experimental study). This article focuses on how the STM is helpful for survey researchers and experimentalists. The STM makes analyzing open-ended responses easier, more revealing, and capable of being used to estimate treatment effects. We illustrate these innovations with analysis of text from surveys and experiments.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1064-1082
Number of pages19
JournalAmerican Journal of Political Science
Volume58
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 1 2014

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Sociology and Political Science
  • Political Science and International Relations

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Structural topic models for open-ended survey responses'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this