Methods Bites

Blog of the MZES Social Science Data Lab

BERT and Explainable AI

2023-03-28 43 min read tutorials [Andreas Küpfer Cosima Meyer]

Natural language processing (NLP) is a fascinating field. Popular NLP techniques for understanding (written) human language include next-sentence predictions, translations, text classifications, or sentiment analysis. Such techniques already permeate our everyday lives: What would the world be without services such as Google Translate, DeepL, or the recently released ChatGPT? While common bag-of-words approaches can often be a valuable approach for NLP, Google’s release of BERT in 2018 revolutionized the possibilities in NLP. This Methods Bites Tutorial introduces the logic of large language models (LLM) with a special emphasis on BERT. It provides an applied use case from the social sciences, walks readers through explainable artificial intelligence (AI), and explains how we can leverage explainable AI to explain predictions of our models. Continue reading

Python NLP BERT Deep Learning Explainable AI

Collection, Management, and Analysis of Twitter Data

2022-06-02 18 min read tutorials Andreas Küpfer

As a highly relevant platform for political and social online interactions, researchers increasingly analyze Twitter data. As of 01/2021, Twitter renewed its API, which now includes access to the full history of tweets for academic usage. In this Methods Bites Tutorial, Andreas Küpfer (Technical University of Darmstadt & MZES) presents a walkthrough of the collection, management, and analysis of Twitter data. Continue reading

data collection text-as-data R

Survey data collection from start to finish

2022-04-11 22 min read instructionals Joshua Hellyer

Surveys have long been a staple of social science research on individuals’ attitudes and behaviors. In recent years, however, we have witnessed a strong shift from secondary analyses of large general social surveys toward smaller, more targeted primary data collections. This development has been accompanied by the increasing availability of affordable and easy-to-implement surveys using online access panels. While the entry barriers to original survey-based research are now likely lower than ever before, it still comes with notable methodological, administrative, and logistic challenges. To help aspiring survey researchers navigate this process, this Methods Bites Instructional by Joshua Hellyer (MZES, University of Mannheim) provides a comprehensive guide to survey data collection with online access panels. Continue reading

data collection survey data

Telling Stories with Data: Insights into Data Journalism

2021-11-12 10 min read instructionals [Yannik Buhl]

Telling stories with data is one of the most important things to do for almost everyone working with data analyses. Why? Because its goal is reaching the audience one wants to reach. If one succeeds therein – be it, for example, average news consumers or academics in a specific field –, the underlying data analysis will more probably have a lasting impact. A good story drags the audience into your analysis. In this Methods Bites Tutorial, Yannik Buhl offers a recap of his workshop “Telling Stories with Data: Insights into Data Journalism” in the MZES Social Science Data Lab during Spring 2021. It focuses on the important steps to tell a thorough story based on data analyses – and how scientists and data journalists can learn from each other. Continue reading

Data visualization Data journalism
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