Abstract for: Mapping Complex Socio-Technical Systems at Scale: Automating Purposive Text Analysis with Natural Language Processing

By combining Natural Language Processing and Purposive Text Analysis for an East African rural water case study, this research seeks to rigorously highlight and characterize the interaction between factors that influence rural water service sustainability from a multitude of regional and service delivery contexts and provide insight into how key stakeholders conceptualize their local system. In doing so, this work seeks to provide a replicable, scalable and actionable tool that researchers practitioners can use to map, evaluate and discuss the interconnected drivers of any socio-technical challenge using transcribed semi-structured interview data.