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Yajuan Si - Where Granularity Matters: Calibrating Subdomain Inference for Binary Outcomes - JPSM MPSDS Seminar 09.10.2025

Where Granularity Matters: Calibrating Subdomain Inference for Binary OutcomesSmall area estimation (SAE) helps us make accurate estimates for local communities or groups, such as counties, neighborhoods, or demographic subgroups, when there are not enough data for each area. This is important for targeting local resources and policies, especially when national-level or large-area data mask variation at a more granular level. Researchers often fit hierarchical Bayesian models to stabilize…

Qixuan Chen - Improve Survey Inference using Bayesian Machine Learning - JPSM MPSDS Seminar - April 2, 2025

Improve Survey Inference Using Bayesian Machine Learning We consider survey inference from nonrandom samples in data-rich settings where high-dimensional auxiliary information is available both in the sample and the target population. When we have access to the individual-level data of the auxiliary variables in the population, we propose a regularized predictive inference approach that predicts the outcomes in the population based on the large number of auxiliary variables using…

7th Annual Likert Symposium - Generating and Classifying Text: Challenges and Benefits of Using Language Models in Social Research

7th Annual Likert SymposiumGenerating and Classifying Text: Challenges and Benefits of Using Language Models in Social ResearchMarch 14, 2025 Dr. Trent D. BuskirkLLMs are Large, but should they be in Charge? Exploring the Possibility and Implausibility of Large Language Models in Survey Science Take a glance through recent news or social media and you would be hard-pressed not to see mentions of chatbots and artificial intelligence (AI) methods aimed at generating text, images and other…

Tom Crossley - What would you do with £500? (...in your own words) - JPSM MPSDS Seminar 02.05.2025

What would you do with £500? (...in your own words)Coauthors: Thomas Crossley (University of Michigan), Peter Levell (Institute for Fiscal Studies, London) and Sofia Sierra Vasquez (University of St. Gallen, Switzerland). A longstanding puzzle in macroeconomics is why individuals with similar levels of available liquidity can have very different marginal propensities to consume (MPCs). We use a new approach to better investigate differences in consumer behaviour in response to…

Stephen Blumberg - Establishing the New NCHS Rapid Surveys System -- Challenges and Lessons Learned - JPSM MPSDS Seminar

Establishing the New NCHS Rapid Surveys System -- Challenges and Lessons Learned The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for timely critical health and health care data from population-based surveys. Legacy surveys such as the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) could not meet this need due to both the disruption to data collection from the pandemic and the longer processing times prior to data release. To meet the continuing demand for relevant and timely data on…

Christina Dragon - Advancing Equity through Robust Sexual and Gender Minority Representation through Data Collection - November 6, 2024

Advancing Equity through Robust Sexual and Gender Minority Representation through Data Collection 2022 was a critical year in advancing data collection for sexual and gender minority populations. In March, the National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) published their consensus report, Measuring Sex, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation, funded and requested by the National Institutes of Health. Only three months later, President Biden issued Executive Order…

10.29.2024 MPSDS webinar

10.10.24 MPSDS webinar