Research challenges and training needs in text analysis for social science research

An ever-increasing availability of digital texts has opened new research opportunities for social scientists. Yet, researchers who want to utilise these data face several challenges. This paper presents the results of a community-wide survey tapping into various research challenges, training needs and preferences of scholars using text analysis methodologies. The survey involved respondents from various academic fields and career levels. Our findings indicate that text-as-data methods are gaining momentum in various social sciences fields and are used on a wide range of political texts. However, relevant training is not easily accessible to all. Only half of the respondents have ever participated in a training event, though there is a high demand for training opportunities, both in different formats and at different levels. In the conclusions we discuss how the inaccessibility of training risks narrowing the field of researchers.