Scaling constructs with semantic networks

James A. Danowski () and Kenneth Riopelle
Additional contact information
James A. Danowski: University of Illinois at Chicago
Kenneth Riopelle: Wayne State University

Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, 2019, vol. 53, issue 5, No 27, 2683 pages

Abstract: Abstract This paper introduces a method for creating scales of constructs based on word bigram cooccurrences in natural language text. Instead of using a stop-word list to drop less useful words, we use a start-word list that enables computing the cooccurrences of only these “smart words.” In this way, we can create scales to measure communication constructs by first listing the key terms in the conceptual definition, then expanding the terms by looking up synonyms in dictionaries such as WordNet. Following this, we compute the cooccurrence network among these words with a sliding window. Next, we extract the first dimension through principal components analysis and identify the words that load most highly on the first factor. For these words, we sum the frequencies, which produces the final index for the construct. This operationalization yields index scales that have high construct validity, which contributes to external validity. Extending the procedures of classic psychometric index construction into the natural language domain avoids the biases of data based on fixed-choice questionnaires. To demonstrate the procedures for construct operationalization, we use a dataset of news stories about the BP Deepwater Horizon Gulf Oil Spill, scaling environmental uncertainty and organizational responses to it including innovation, strategic planning, and changes in organizational structure.

Keywords: Sentiment analysis; Semantic networks; Network analysis; Environmental uncertainty; Teams; Strategic planning; Innovation; News content; Content analysis; Machine learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11135-019-00879-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:qualqt:v:53:y:2019:i:5:d:10.1007_s11135-019-00879-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11135-019-00879-5

Access Statistics for this article

Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology is currently edited by Vittorio Capecchi

More articles in Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().