Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Lieb, Anna, Arora, Maneesh, Mustafaraj, Eni
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.17445
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866915256656199680
author Lieb, Anna
Arora, Maneesh
Mustafaraj, Eni
author_facet Lieb, Anna
Arora, Maneesh
Mustafaraj, Eni
contents Unsupervised machine learning techniques, such as topic modeling and clustering, are often used to identify latent patterns in unstructured text data in fields such as political science and sociology. These methods overcome common concerns about reproducibility and costliness involved in the labor-intensive process of human qualitative analysis. However, two major limitations of topic models are their interpretability and their practicality for answering targeted, domain-specific social science research questions. In this work, we investigate opportunities for using LLM-generated text augmentation to improve the usefulness of topic modeling output. We use a political science case study to evaluate our results in a domain-specific application, and find that topic modeling using GPT-4 augmentations creates highly interpretable categories that can be used to investigate domain-specific research questions with minimal human guidance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_17445
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Creating Targeted, Interpretable Topic Models with LLM-Generated Text Augmentation
Lieb, Anna
Arora, Maneesh
Mustafaraj, Eni
Computation and Language
Unsupervised machine learning techniques, such as topic modeling and clustering, are often used to identify latent patterns in unstructured text data in fields such as political science and sociology. These methods overcome common concerns about reproducibility and costliness involved in the labor-intensive process of human qualitative analysis. However, two major limitations of topic models are their interpretability and their practicality for answering targeted, domain-specific social science research questions. In this work, we investigate opportunities for using LLM-generated text augmentation to improve the usefulness of topic modeling output. We use a political science case study to evaluate our results in a domain-specific application, and find that topic modeling using GPT-4 augmentations creates highly interpretable categories that can be used to investigate domain-specific research questions with minimal human guidance.
title Creating Targeted, Interpretable Topic Models with LLM-Generated Text Augmentation
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.17445