Data Science Methodology

Our experts produce new methodologies to further understand how social media affects politics and democracy. From developing and deploying code, CSMaP researchers create new ways to quantify social media interactions and its effects.

Academic Research

  • Working Paper

    Survey Professionalism: New Evidence from Web Browsing Data

    Working Paper, August 2024

    View Article View abstract

    Online panels have become an important resource for research in political science, but the financial compensation involved incentivizes respondents to become “survey professionals”, which raises concerns about data quality. We provide evidence on survey professionalism using behavioral web browsing data from three U.S. samples, recruited via Lucid, YouGov, and Facebook (total n = 3,886). Survey professionalism is common but varies across samples: By our most conservative measure, we identify 1.7% of respondents on Facebook, 7.9% of respondents on YouGov, and 34.3% of respondents on Lucid as survey professionals. However, evidence that professionals lower data quality is limited: they do not systematically differ demographically or politically from non-professionals and do not respond more randomly—although they are somewhat more likely to speed, to straightline, and to take questionnaires repeatedly. While concerns are warranted, we conclude that survey professionals do not, by and large, distort inferences of research based on online panels.

    Date Posted

    Aug 30, 2024

  • Working Paper

    Reaching Across the Political Aisle: Overcoming Challenges in Using Social Media for Recruiting Politically Diverse Respondents

    Working Paper, August 2024

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    A challenge for public opinion surveys is achieving representativeness of respondents across demographic groups. We test the extent to which ideological alignment with a survey’s sponsor shapes differential partisan response and users’ choice of whether to participate in a research study on Facebook. While the use of Facebook advertisements for recruitment has increased in recent years and offers potential benefits, it can yield difficulties in recruiting politically representative samples. We recruit respondents for a short survey through two otherwise identical advertisements associated with either New York University (from a liberal state) or the University of Mississippi (from a conservative state). Contrary to our expectations, we don’t find an asymmetry in completion rates between self-reported Democrats and Republicans based on the survey sponsor. Nor do we find statistically significant differences in attitudes of respondents across the two survey sponsors when we control for observables.

    Date Posted

    Aug 13, 2024

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