Establishing Nomological Networks for Behavioral Science: a Natural Language Processing Based Approach

2011 | International Conference on Information Systems | Citations: 4

Authors: Li, Jingjing; Larsen, Kai

Abstract: As the accumulated research base of the behavioral sciences have grown, the amou ... Expand

Abstract: As the accumulated research base of the behavioral sciences have grown, the amount of actual knowledge discovery has not kept pace as evidenced by an increasing number of disconnected theories and the related problem of construct proliferation. Therefore, integrating social and behavioral sciences across research areas or even disciplines in a meaningful way is imperative. Despite the information systems (IS) discipline’s leadership on creating nomological networks and inter-nomological networks for research integration, a quantitative approach to automatically establish nomological networks from large-scale data is missing. Based on the design science paradigm, we therefore propose a novel natural language processing based approach bringing together these two previous research endeavors. We used a dataset consisting of all the relevant behavioral studies from two tops journal in the IS and psychology fields to evaluate our approach in comparison to human decisions. Finally, the limitations and possible extensions of our approach are critically discussed. Collapse

Topics: IT productivity database system behavioral intention web crawling word of mouth

Methods: natural language processing literature sample machine learning part of speech tagging design science

Theories: cognitive flexibility theory unified theory of information