Date/Time
Date(s) - 31/07/2024
2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
Category(ies) No Categories
IASS Webinar 42: Leveraging AI for Survey Research
Speaker: Frauke Kreuter, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany and University of Maryland, USA
31 July 2024 at 2pm – 3:30pm (CET)
All are invited to the webinar, organised by the International Association of Survey Statisticians.
Please register for the IASS Webinar at: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/1017192290666/WN_nlvPPSGESoOV0VrvOD0-5g#/registration
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. There will be time for questions. The webinar will be recorded and made available on the IASS and ISI web site. See below for the abstract and biography of the speakers.
Webinar Abstract
This presentation scrutinizes the transformative potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) in survey research, focusing on three critical areas: questionnaire design, synthetic data creation, and the role of LLMs as qualitative interviewers. In the domain of questionnaire design, the lecture delves into if and how LLMs can construct contextually accurate and highly effective survey items. However, there are valid concerns about the model’s understanding and potential biases, which we will critically evaluate. She also discusses LLMs’ ability to fabricate synthetic data, preserving core statistical properties whilst ensuring privacy. Here too, the ethical implications and the potential for misuse of this capability pose challenges that need to be addressed. Lastly, the lecture explores how LLMs, with their human-like conversational ability, can act as qualitative interviewers, allowing in-depth information gathering at scale. Yet, questions about their ability to fully capture the complexity and subtleties of human interaction and response also remain. The underlying theme of this talk is the question on how research in this space should be structured.
Biography
Frauke Kreuter is a professor in the Joint Program in Survey Methodology (JPSM), Co-director of the Social Data Science Center (SoDa) at the University of Maryland, and chair of Statistics and Data Science at LMU Munich. Currently she serves as president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. In addition to her academic work, Professor Kreuter is the Founder of the International Program for Survey and Data Science (IPSDS), developed in response to the increasing demand from researchers and practitioners for the appropriate methods and right tools to face a changing data environment, and Co-Founder of the Coleridge Initiative, whose goal is to accelerate data-driven research and policy around human beings and their interactions for program management, policy development, and scholarly purposes by enabling efficient, effective, and secure access to sensitive data about society and the economy.