IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/zbw/espost/200241.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

"What else are you worried about?" – Integrating textual responses into quantitative social science research

Author

Listed:
  • Rohrer, Julia M.
  • Brümmer, Martin
  • Schmukle, Stefan C.
  • Goebel, Jan
  • Wagner, Gert G.

Abstract

Open-ended questions have routinely been included in large-scale survey and panel studies, yet there is some perplexity about how to actually incorporate the answers to such questions into quantitative social science research. Tools developed recently in the domain of natural language processing offer a wide range of options for the automated analysis of such textual data, but their implementation has lagged behind. In this study, we demonstrate straightforward procedures that can be applied to process and analyze textual data for the purposes of quantitative social science research. Using more than 35,000 textual answers to the question “What else are you worried about?” from participants of the German Socio-economic Panel Study (SOEP), we (1) analyzed characteristics of respondents that determined whether they answered the open-ended question, (2) used the textual data to detect relevant topics that were reported by the respondents, and (3) linked the features of the respondents to the worries they reported in their textual data. The potential uses as well as the limitations of the automated analysis of textual data are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Rohrer, Julia M. & Brümmer, Martin & Schmukle, Stefan C. & Goebel, Jan & Wagner, Gert G., 2017. ""What else are you worried about?" – Integrating textual responses into quantitative social science research," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 12(7), pages 1-34.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:200241
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0182156
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/200241/1/Rohrer_2017_Are%20You%20Worried%20FT.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0182156?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Julia M. Rohrer & Martin Bruemmer & Jürgen Schupp & Gert G. Wagner, 2017. "Worries across Time and Age in Germany: Bringing Together Open- and Close-Ended Questions," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1671, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    2. Patrick Meyer & Fenja M Schophaus & Thomas Glassen & Jasmin Riedl & Julia M Rohrer & Gert G Wagner & Timo von Oertzen, 2019. "Using the Dirichlet process to form clusters of people’s concerns in the context of future party identification," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(3), pages 1-20, March.
    3. Zhang, Yucheng & Xu, Shan & Zhang, Long & Yang, Mengxi, 2021. "Big data and human resource management research: An integrative review and new directions for future research," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 34-50.
    4. Rohrer, Julia M. & Brümmer, Martin & Schupp, Jürgen & Wagner, Gert G., 2021. "Worries across time and age in the German Socio-Economic Panel study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 332-343.
    5. Gert G. Wagner & Martin Bruemmer & Axel Glemser & Julia Rohrer & Jürgen Schupp, 2017. "Dimensions of Quality of Life in Germany: Measured by Plain Text Responses in a Representative Survey (SOEP)," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 893, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    6. Alan Piper & Ian Jackson, 2017. "She’s leaving home: a large sample investigation of the empty nest syndrome," Danish-German Working Papers 006, Europa-Universität Flensburg, International Institute of Management (IIM);University of Southern Denmark, Department of Border Region Studies (IFG).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:200241. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zbwkide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.