Category: Data and Society
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How to use ChatGPT in Social Science Research
In this post, I discuss how to use ChatGPT in social science research. The take-away message is: The AI is the assistant and you are the director. Many AI tools for social scientists There are many AI tools out there, including ChatGPT. Otter.ai does transcripts. Notion.so integrates notes (including transcripts). Consensus.app is like Google Scholar…
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Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Social Scientist
As AI increases in use and popularity, the profession of the social sciences will change. AI will eventually change the daily job of the social scientist in terms of research, teaching, and administration. There are ethical issues of plagiarism, defined as “pretending to write something that is not yours – even if it is stolen…
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Local Data and Upstream Reporting as Sources of Error in the Covid 19 Undercount
The growth, stability, and decline in cases and mortality due to Covid 19 are generally based on administrative data that various people and organizations collect, harmonize, and aggregate. Many data providers have made their data available in machine-readable form for public scrutiny with an intention to guide policy-makers and educate the public. These data are…
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Quantitative Approaches to Intersectionality: The Small n Problem
A challenge for intersectional survey research is the “Small n Problem”: when there are too few observations in the sample to permit the desired analysis. To perform the multivariate quantitative techniques popular in analyses of survey data, we need an adequate number of cases in each category. For instance, if gender and class are necessary…
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Sociology and AI Text-to-Image: A Practical Guide
AI text-to-image — where users input textual descriptions into an Artificial Intelligence website or app to generate a unique picture — is a new way for sociologists to understand society and teach sociology. This post provides a practical guide for sociologists to use AI text-to-image for research and classroom instruction. What is AI Text-to-Image? There…
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Visual Sociology and Artificial Intelligence: AI Images of Society
Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to transform society in terms of work, economy, politics, and culture. As these changes seem inevitable, people become increasingly concerned over the ethics of AI, and more and more sociologists are studying the potential impacts of AI on society. In this post, we examine how sociologists have examined Artificial Intelligence…
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The Rise of Big Data and Computational Social Science in Sociology
In this post, we examine the rise of big data and computational social science in sociology. Many sociologists complain about quantification Academics (on Twitter and elsewhere) often loudly complain about metrics — the quantification of their production, including impact factor, citations, and “points” that universities and other academic institutions, as well as government institutions, devise…