On Wednesday 5/08 from 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM, CDWG will host June Yang to present her research. June Yang is a Ph.D. candidate at UW’s Department of Sociology, a CSDE T32 fellow in Demography and Data Science, and recently joined UW CSDE and eScience Institute as a research scientist. Her current research projects include 1) using social media text data to study attitudes around alternative forms of union formation and childbearing choices, and 2) using complex survey data to study the homeless population in King County, WA. The event will occur in 223 Raitt (the Demography Lab) and on Zoom (register here). Learn more about the talk in the full story.

Title: Supervised Topic Modeling with GPT-assisted Text Annotations: A Study of Ideas around Cohabitation

This study examines values and ideas around cohabitation using text data from the Chinese social media website Zhihu. Scholars have heavily cited the Second Demographic Transition theory to account for rising trends of cohabitation in different countries. The theory argues for the prominent role played by ideational changes such as individualism and the quest for self-actualization in leading to diffused patterns of union formation. China has witnessed a rising cohabitation but paradoxically, according to existing research, marriage is still largely seen as the only cultural ideal in the society. Using text data, this study aims to reveal the complexities of the choice of cohabitation in a patriarchal context. Methodologically, this study utilizes GPT-4 to generate a label from the text data that measures a liberal/non-liberal attitude about cohabitation and further adopts supervised topic modeling to generate latent topics from the text that predict the label.

Applications are now open for this program, which assists scholars in preparing applications to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). More info here, and application page here. Past participants report great success, and lots of support and even fun along the way. Applying to the GWSP is open to CSDE affiliates (UW and external) as well as to local post-docs writing K awards with one or more CSDE affiliates on their mentoring team. If accepted, the program is free for applicants in these groups. Other researchers in the Seattle area are also eligible to apply and may be accepted if space is available.  The program fee is $7,500 for these applicants. (Current graduate students are not eligible to apply, sorry). Applications are due May 10th.

Questions?  See the info page, or contact Steven Goodreau (goodreau@uw.edu).

CSDE Affiliate Jing Xu (Anthropology) co-authored an article in Scientific Reports, entitled “Modeling children’s moral development in postwar Taiwan through naturalistic observations preserved in historical texts“. A core issue in the interdisciplinary study of human morality is its ontogeny in diverse cultures, but systematic, naturalistic data in specific cultural contexts are rare to find. This study conducts a novel analysis of 213 children’s socio-moral behavior in a historical, non-Western, rural setting, based on a unique dataset of naturalistic observations from the first field research on Han Chinese children.

We are pleased to announce the first Call for Letters of Interest (LOI) for a training opportunity at the Washington Learning Health System Embedded Scientist Training and Research (LHS E-STAR) Center. The Center collaborates closely with four federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) and provides mentored LHS training to scholars embedded within these primary care organizations. This first round will consist of two scholar positions working with Community Health of Central Washington and NeighborCare Health. Subsequent scholars will conduct projects in primary care at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System, Kaiser Permanente Washington, Community Health Association of Spokane, and HealthPoint. Learn more about the E-STAR Center on our website. An informational webinar on the LOI and application process will be held on May 14, 2024 from 10:30AM-12:00 PM, register here. All LOI materials will be due on May 29, 2024.  

We encourage you to share the attached instructions for the LOI with early career faculty, postdocs, and PhD students who may be interested in this exciting opportunity.  

In the meantime, should you have any questions, please contact Monica Fujii (monica.m.fujii@kp.org).  

This workshop on November 5 to 6, 2024 at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock, Germany, clarifies the goals, techniques, and applications of machine learning methods for population research. The main focus of this workshop is on ML techniques using quantitative population data and research questions, not on ML language models. The workshop consists of keynotes, contributed sessions, and a tutorial. Learn more here and apply by May 15th. A pdf version of the call is also available here.

JSDE (Joint Seminar in Development Economics) is excited to host Matt Lowe on May 20th from 11:00-12:30 in 410 Savery. Lowe is an assistant professor of economics at the University of British Columbia. More details on this talk to come!

Join CSSS for a seminar with Jason R. Williams on Wednesday, May 22nd from 12:30-1:30 PM in 409 Savery and on Zoom (register here). Dr. Williams is a research scientist at the Addictions, Drug & Alcohol Institute at the University of Washington School of Medicine. At ADAI, he works on tracking trends in problematic drug use, analysis of survey data, and evaluations using both primary and secondary data. He received his PhD from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance in 2013 with assistance from CSSS and the West Coast Poverty Center. Learn more about Williams talk on the event page here.