2025/10/17 by Corey M. Abramson, Abramson, Corey M., Yuhan +1
Social Sciences · #Computational and Text Analysis Methods #Qualitative Research Methods and Applications #Qualitative Comparative Analysis Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2510.16140
The CMAP (cultural mapping and pattern analysis) visualization toolkit introduced in this paper is an open-source suite for analyzing and visualizing text data - from qualitative fieldnotes and in-depth interview transcripts to historical documents and web-scaped data like message board posts or blogs. The toolkit is designed for scholars integrating pattern analysis, data visualization, and explanation in qualitative and/or computational social science (CSS). Despite the existence of off-the-shelf commercial qualitative data analysis software, there is a dearth of highly scalable open source options that can work with large data sets, and allow advanced statistical and language modeling. The foundation of the toolkit is a pragmatic approach that aligns research tools with social science project goals- empirical explanation, theory-guided measurement, comparative design, or evidence-based recommendations- guided by the principle that research paradigm and questions should determine methods. Consequently, the CMAP visualization toolkit offers a range of possibilities through the adjustment of relatively small number of parameters, and allows integration with other python tools.