Embracing A Mixed Methods Approach to Text as Data

Text has long been an important source of information in the social sciences. Historically, using text to measure a particular concept has required practitioners to read (and re-read) documents, making interpretive decisions along the way. In the humanistic social sciences, a great deal of weight is given to expert debate when evaluating the interpretation of texts. This generally means that the research community trusts a particular researcher’s interpretation up until another researcher challenges it. Therefore, within this humanistic tradition, using text as a source of information has typically been a highly qualitative method.