scholarly journals Promise Into Practice: Application of Computer Vision in Empirical Research on Social Distancing

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wim Bernasco ◽  
Eveline Hoeben ◽  
Dennis Koelma ◽  
Lasse Suonperä Liebst ◽  
Josephine Thomas ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Computer Vision ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Ground Truth ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Video Data ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Automated Coding

Social scientists increasingly use video data, but large-scale analysis of its content is often constrained by scarce manual coding resources. Upscaling may be possible with the application of automated coding procedures, which are being developed in the field of computer vision. Here, we introduce computer vision to social scientists, review the state-of-the-art in relevant subfields, and provide a working example of how computer vision can be applied in empirical sociological work. Our application involves defining a ground truth by human coders, developing an algorithm for automated coding, testing the performance of the algorithm against the ground truth, and run the algorithm on a large-scale dataset of CCTV images. The working example concerns monitoring social distancing behavior in public space over more than a year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, we discuss prospects for the use of computer vision in empirical social science research and address technical and ethical limitations.

Using Motion Detection to Measure Social Polarization in the U.S. House of Representatives

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Bryce J. Dietrich
Keyword(s):  
Motion Detection ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Image Data ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Video Data ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Party Voting ◽  
The Many

Abstract Although previous scholars have used image data to answer important political science questions, less attention has been paid to video-based measures. In this study, I use motion detection to understand the extent to which members of Congress (MCs) literally cross the aisle, but motion detection can be used to study a wide range of political phenomena, like protests, political speeches, campaign events, or oral arguments. I find not only are Democrats and Republicans less willing to literally cross the aisle, but this behavior is also predictive of future party voting, even when previous party voting is included as a control. However, this is one of the many ways motion detection can be used by social scientists. In this way, the present study is not the end, but the beginning of an important new line of research in which video data is more actively used in social science research.

Privacy and Security Concerns When Social Scientists Work with Administrative and Operational Data

2017 ◽  
Vol 675 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simson L. Garfinkel
Keyword(s):  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Differential Privacy ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Information And Communications Technology ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Privacy And Security ◽  
Ethical Frameworks ◽  
Operational Data

Social science research is transitioning from working with “designated data,” collected through experiments and surveys, to working with “organic data,” including administrative data not collected for research purposes, and other data such as those collected from online social networks and large-scale sensor networks. The shift to organic data requires significant innovations in research methodologies. This article reviews the complexities and diversity of organic data and the special efforts that must be undertaken to make those data findable and usable by researchers. In some cases, advanced formal privacy techniques such as differential privacy and secure multiparty computation are needed to work with organic data in a manner that is ethically and logistically permissible, and effort is also required to make studies involving organic data transparent and replicable. These considerations make clear that moving forward, social scientists and information and communications technology (ICT) professionals must work closely to develop appropriate technical controls and ethical frameworks that minimize the risks of research to participants and to society at large.

Classical Greek Oligarchy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Simonton
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Majority Population ◽  
New Development ◽  
The Face ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
Client Relations

This book thoroughly reassesses an important but neglected form of government in ancient Greece, the “rule of the few.” The book challenges scholarly orthodoxy by showing that oligarchy was not the default mode of politics from time immemorial, but instead emerged alongside, and in reaction to, democracy. It establishes how oligarchies maintained power in the face of potential citizen resistance. It argues that oligarchs designed distinctive political institutions—such as intra-oligarchic power sharing, targeted repression, and rewards for informants—to prevent collective action among the majority population while sustaining cooperation within their own ranks. To clarify the workings of oligarchic institutions, the book draws on recent social science research on authoritarianism. Like modern authoritarian regimes, ancient Greek oligarchies had to balance coercion with co-optation in order to keep their subjects disorganized and powerless. The book investigates topics such as control of public space, the manipulation of information, and the establishment of patron–client relations, frequently citing parallels with contemporary nondemocratic regimes. It also traces changes over time in antiquity, revealing the processes through which oligarchy lost the ideological battle with democracy for legitimacy. This book represents a major new development in the study of ancient politics. It fills a longstanding gap in our knowledge of nondemocratic government while greatly improving our understanding of forms of power that continue to affect us today.

Second Annual Conference of the “ASEAN Muslim Social Scientists’ Forum”

1988 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-306
Author(s):  
Hussain Mutalib
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Annual Conference ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Asian Region ◽  
Select Group ◽  
Islamic Resurgence ◽  
Closed Door

The Muslim Social Science Scholars’ Forum of ASEAN (Associationof Southeast Asian Nations) held its Second Meeting in Bangkok, Thailandfrom Mubrram 20-23, 1409lSeptember 1-4, 1988, under the auspices of theFoundation for Democracy and Development Studies. The theme for themeeting was “Muslim Scholars and Social Science Research,” aimed atdocumenting, discussing and analyzing the types of scholarship or researchthat have been done about Muslims in the Southeast Asian region, particularlywithin the ASEAN countries.A select group of Muslim social science scholars (together with someMuslim politicians) from the countries within ASEAN, except Brunei, wereinvited to the “Forum.” They included: Drs. Dawan Raharjo and NurcholisMajid, and Professor Moeslim (Indonesia), Drs. Surin Pitsuwan, SeneeMadmarn and Chaiwat (Thailand), Drs. Yusof Talib and Hussain Mutalib(Singapore), Professors Taib Osman and Wan Hashim and Umar Farouq(Malaysia), and Drs. Carmen Abubakar, Madale and Mastura (Philippines).All participants were either presenters of papers or discussants.Throughout the four-day deliberations, participants discussed the typesof studies and research that have been the focus of scholars studying Muslimcommunities in the ASEAN region. Some titles of papers included: “MuslimStudies in the Phillipines;” “Social Science Research in Thailand;” and “SocialScience Research in Malaysia: the Case of Islamic Resurgence.”Given the “closed-door” ‘nature of the meeting (participation was byinvitation only), there was adequate time for a more intensive, frank andthorough discussions of the papers. Problems and issues were aired and posed,and alternative options offered by participants. For every paper, there wasa discussant; hence, the issues that came out of the papers managed to beseen, discussed and appreciated from a more complete and balancedperspective.By and large, the Bangkok meeting was a successful one. Theapproximately twenty participants were generally pleased with the high qualityof papers presented and the sense of brotherhood that prevailed. The warmhospitality of the hosts from Thailand was also appreciated ...

Politics and Research: Epistemological Moments

1990 ◽  
Vol 15 (01) ◽  
pp. 149-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adelaide H. Villmoare
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Law And Society ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Relationship

In reading the essays by David M. Trubek and John Esser and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, I thought about what I call epistemological moments that have provided contexts within which to understand the relationship between social science research and politics. I will sketch four moments and suggest that I find one of them more compelling than the others because it speaks particularly to social scientists with critical, democratic ambitions and to Trubek and Esser's concerns about politics and the intellectual vitality of the law and society movement.

scholarly journals The Inference Engine: A Grand Challenge to Address the Context Sensitivity Problem in Social Science Research

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel L. Goroff ◽  
Neil Anthony Lewis ◽  
Anne M. Scheel ◽  
Laura Danielle Scherer ◽  
Joshua A Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Inference Engine ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Grand Challenge ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The People ◽  
Working Together ◽  
Sensitivity Problem

Social science has a ‘context sensitivity’ problem: the people that we study, and the situations they engage in, are so complex and variable that predicting how they will think, feel, and behave in a given situation is very challenging. Even when we are able to make such predictions, it is often unclear how accurate they will be if some feature of the studied subjects and/or situation changes. This limits the utility of our research for application and policy, as the ‘contextual factors’ that might change our conclusions are often unknown. It is time to address this context sensitivity problem in social science research. While do not yet know how to solve it, we believe social scientists can make great progress by working together to build an inference engine.

Legacies of the 1960s: The American “Rights Revolution” in an Era of Divided Governance

1998 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh Davis Graham
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Science Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Temporal Perspective ◽  
The 1960S

Scholarship on the political development of the United States since the 1960s is dominated, not surprisingly, by social scientists. Such recent events fall within the penumbra of “contemporary history,” the standard research domain of social scientists but treacherous terrain for historians. Social scientists studying American government and society generally enjoy prompt access to evidence of the policy-making process–documents from the elected and judicial branches of government, interviews with policy elites, voting returns, survey research. Historians of the recent past, on the other hand, generally lack two crucial ingredients–temporal perspective and archival evidence–that distinguish historical analysis from social science research. For these reasons, social scientists (and journalists) customarily define the initial terms of policy debate and shape the conventional wisdom. Historians weigh in later, when memories fade, archives open, and the clock adds a relentless and inherently revisionist accumulation of hindsight.

Using a Probabilistic Model to Assist Merging of Large-Scale Administrative Records

2019 ◽  
Vol 113 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
TED ENAMORADO ◽  
BENJAMIN FIFIELD ◽  
KOSUKE IMAI
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Auxiliary Information ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Unique Identifier ◽  
Scalable Algorithm ◽  
Administrative Records ◽  
Inaccurate Information ◽  
Multiple Data ◽  
Open Source Software Package

Since most social science research relies on multiple data sources, merging data sets is an essential part of researchers’ workflow. Unfortunately, a unique identifier that unambiguously links records is often unavailable, and data may contain missing and inaccurate information. These problems are severe especially when merging large-scale administrative records. We develop a fast and scalable algorithm to implement a canonical model of probabilistic record linkage that has many advantages over deterministic methods frequently used by social scientists. The proposed methodology efficiently handles millions of observations while accounting for missing data and measurement error, incorporating auxiliary information, and adjusting for uncertainty about merging in post-merge analyses. We conduct comprehensive simulation studies to evaluate the performance of our algorithm in realistic scenarios. We also apply our methodology to merging campaign contribution records, survey data, and nationwide voter files. An open-source software package is available for implementing the proposed methodology.

scholarly journals Using Quantile Regression to Estimate Intervention Effects Beyond the Mean

2019 ◽  
Vol 79 (5) ◽  
pp. 883-910 ◽  
Author(s):  
Spyros Konstantopoulos ◽  
Wei Li ◽  
Shazia Miller ◽  
Arie van der Ploeg
Keyword(s):  
Quantile Regression ◽  
Least Squares ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Ordinary Least Squares ◽  
Least Squares Regression ◽  
Intervention Effects ◽  
Education Data

This study discusses quantile regression methodology and its usefulness in education and social science research. First, quantile regression is defined and its advantages vis-à-vis vis ordinary least squares regression are illustrated. Second, specific comparisons are made between ordinary least squares and quantile regression methods. Third, the applicability of quantile regression to empirical work to estimate intervention effects is demonstrated using education data from a large-scale experiment. The estimation of quantile treatment effects at various quantiles in the presence of dropouts is also discussed. Quantile regression is especially suitable in examining predictor effects at various locations of the outcome distribution (e.g., lower and upper tails).

scholarly journals Spatially Integrated Social Sciences with Qualitative GIS to Support Impact Assessment in Mining Communities

Resources ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Lechner ◽  
John Owen ◽  
Michelle Ang ◽  
Deanna Kemp
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Dynamic Interactions ◽  
Mining Communities ◽  
Qualitative Gis ◽  
Future Assessment ◽  
Broad Term ◽  
Qualitative Knowledge

Spatially integrated social science is a broad term used to describe the integration of space and place in social science research using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). It includes qualitative GIS approaches, such as geo-ethnology and geo-narratives, which combine qualitative social data with GIS and represent an emerging approach with significant potential for facilitating new insights into the dynamic interactions between mining companies and host communities. Mine operations are unique in their complexity, both in terms of the dynamic and diverse nature of issues and the requirement to integrate knowledge, theories, and approaches from a range of disciplines. In this paper we describe the potential for spatially integrated social science using qualitative GIS to understand the social impacts of mining. We review current literature and propose a framework that incorporates quantitative and qualitative knowledge across social and biophysical domains within a multi-user approach. We provide examples to illustrate how our approach could support past, present, and future assessment of socio-environmental systems in large-scale mining. We conclude by discussing the need for a multi-disciplinary approach to support decision makers and local stakeholders in considering complex social and environmental scenarios.

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