Empower Research Lab

Empower Research Lab

Language of Pain

Using NLP and thematic analysis to explore and understand pain descriptions, revealing differences between acute and chronic pain expressions.

Description

The focus of this project is on applying a combination of computational natural language processing (NLP) and qualitative thematic analysis to patients’ descriptions of pain. We are particularly interested in comparing the language used by patients with acute pain with those who have been experiencing chronic pain. Some possible directions for the project can include thematic and semantic analysis. Questions we hope to answer with this project are: (1) how does a chronic patient describe pain?; (2) how does an acute pain patient describe pain?; (3) how do chronic pain and acute pain patients differ in their linguistic expression of pain?; (4) what is the role of metaphors in language around pain?; (5) what is the temporal relationship between pain transitions (from acute to chronic) and language?

Date

2021 - Present

Keywords

pain

patients

surveys

ethnography

natural language processing

D-Pine
Murnane Research Group at Dartmouth College | Contact: empowerlab@dartmouth.edu | Last updated: March 2025
Thayer School of Engineering