Despite the rich insights they offer, open-ended survey responses remain underutilized in educational research, often due to a lack of awareness of emergent methods that can efficiently analyze such data. This methodological brief addresses this gap by introducing the topic modeling technique, particularly the latent Dirichlet allocation, as a tool for analyzing open-ended responses and facilitating the investigation of relationships between textual responses and measurable outcomes. This brief outlines the rationale behind topic modeling and details the implementation process through the analysis of open-ended responses on students’ career interests as an example. In addition, we discuss the advantages and limitations of this technique and provide practical considerations for its application in educational research.
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