Georg Ahnert @IC2S2
@ahnert.eurosky.social
PhD Student in Social Data Science at University of Mannheim | LLMs and Surveys | georgahnert.de
This morning at #ic2s2 I have the chance to present ongoing work on applying a SEM from survey methods to LLM text annotations: 👉 Evaluating LLM Text Annotations Without Ground Truth 📍10:45, Mansfield (210), Understanding LLMs w/ @maximiliankreutner.bsky.social Alex Cernat & @mstrohm.bsky.social
Excited to present a tutorial on simulating survey responses with LLMs at @ic2s2.bsky.social next week! ✨ 👉 central themes: analytic flexibility & hybrid samples with @gligoric.bsky.social, @indiiigo.bsky.social, @maximiliankreutner.bsky.social, @jrupprec.bsky.social, and @mstrohm.bsky.social – 🧵
We have bigger models. Bigger conferences. Have our questions become bigger, too? That was the question I posed in my Presidential Address at #ACL2026 in San Diego. (1/6)
MaiNLP will be at #ACL2026 with a number of talks & posters, plus the ACL presidential address! See you in San Diego 🌊
Super excited to present our work at #ACL2026 ✨ 👉 LLM-based social simulations have lots of analytic flexibility—response generation methods are often overlooked 📍Tue July 7, 9am, Poster Session F
Georg Ahnert @IC2S2@ahnert.eurosky.social · 3mo agoThrilled to share that our paper with @carohaensch.bsky.social, @barbaraplank.bsky.social & @mstrohm.bsky.social has been accepted to #ACL2026 Main! How to generate closed-ended survey responses 📊 with LLMs trained to produce open-ended text? 📝 We show results from 32 mio. simulated responses… 🧵
Thrilled to share that our paper with @carohaensch.bsky.social, @barbaraplank.bsky.social & @mstrohm.bsky.social has been accepted to #ACL2026 Main! How to generate closed-ended survey responses 📊 with LLMs trained to produce open-ended text? 📝 We show results from 32 mio. simulated responses… 🧵
📢 We are very happy to have Jana Jung for our third session of the TADA Spring Speaker Series. Jana will present recently published work on whether psychometric tests work for LLMs. When? 15th of April, 5pm (Berlin time) Where? Online (Sign up for the newsletter at tada.cool) See you there!
Are you using survey-style questionnaires designed for humans to measure characteristics of LLMs? In our #EACL2026 paper, we evaluate both the reliability and validity of such tests and found that their scores do not reflect real-world model behavior. In fact, they can be deceptive! 🧵1/3
Happy to announce the 2nd edition of our Summer School in Computational Social Science that will take place in the beautiful Villa del Grumello on Lake Como between June 22-26, 2026! *** DEADLINE FOR APPLICATION: February 15, 2026 (firm deadline) *** More details here: css2.lakecomoschool.org
👋🏼 I'm at #EMNLP2025 presenting "The Prompt Makes the Person(a): A Systematic Evaluation of Sociodemographic Persona Prompting for LLMs" 🕑 Thu. Nov 6, 12:30 - 13:30 📍 Findings Session 2, Hall C3
Marlene Lutz@marlutz.bsky.social · 9mo ago🚨New paper alert🚨 🤔 Ever wondered how the way you write a persona prompt affects how well an LLM simulates people? In our #EMNLP2025 paper, we find that using interview-style persona prompts makes LLM social simulations less biased and more aligned with human opinions. 🧵1/7
🚨New paper alert🚨 🤔 Ever wondered how the way you write a persona prompt affects how well an LLM simulates people? In our #EMNLP2025 paper, we find that using interview-style persona prompts makes LLM social simulations less biased and more aligned with human opinions. 🧵1/7
Thrilled to talk about how seemingly small decisions in silicon sampling can have a large impact on simulated survey responses 👀 Join us on Oct 29th! 👈
Joshua Claassen@jclaass.bsky.social · 10mo ago🚨 Upcoming #CS3Meeting 🚨 @wanlo.bsky.social talks about analytic flexibility in silicon samples on October 29, 3:15 to 4:00 PM CET). Great opportunity to gain novel insights into how survey responses can be generated with #LLMs. Sign up now: ww3.unipark.de/uc/cs3_meeti...
Come join next Wednesday if you want to rant about society's love-hate relationship with LLMs!
MZES Social Science Data Lab@mzes-ssdl.bsky.social · 10mo ago🚨 Upcoming: "Large Language Models for Social Research: Potentials and Challenges" 👤 Indira Sen (University of Mannheim) 🗓️ Wed, October 22, 13:45-15:15 CET 📺 Register for the live stream: us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi... 🔗 socialsciencedatalab.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/page/events/
![Large Language Models for Social Research: Potentials and Challenges
Hybrid event [A5, 6, Room A231 + Zoom]
Oktober 22, 2025, 13:45-15:15
Abstract
Large Language Models (LLMs) have the potential to revolutionize the social sciences—for example, by accelerating content analysis or enabling realistic social simulations. In this workshop, I will discuss how LLMs can be applied and audited for social science applications, including the generation of synthetic survey responses and content analysis. I will also address how biases in LLMs can hinder these applications and explore ways to better surface and understand these biases. Finally, I will present a hands-on use case demonstrating how LLMs can be guided using demographic personas for both content analysis and simulated surveys.
Presenter(s)
Indira Sen is a Junior Faculty member at the University of Mannheim’s Business School in the Chair of Data Science for the Social and Economic Sciences. Her work lies at the intersection of NLP and Computational Social Science, specifically in developing and evaluating representative and equitable language technology, including Large Language Models.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:oizrkjzyr6vekl76tjctghcl/bafkreigj6rty2hy4hgawqzq34a24si45dxzutezuphif3hprnl5amxldoy)
👋 #ACL2025NLP 🇦🇹 @marlutz.bsky.social and I are presenting our poster on demographic representativeness of LLMs today! 🕦 10:30-12:00 📍 Hall X5 (board 1 or 14 according to different sources 🧐) Here’s the paper on ACL anthology: aclanthology.org/2025.finding... Drop by!
Missing the Margins: A Systematic Literature Review on the Demographic Representativeness of LLMs
Indira Sen, Marlene Lutz, Elisa Rogers, David Garcia, Markus Strohmaier. Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2025. 2025.
aclanthology.org
Indira Sen@indiiigo.bsky.social · last yr.Do LLMs represent the people they're supposed simulate or provide personalized assistance to? We review the current literature in our #ACL2025 Findings paper and investigating what researchers conclude about the demographic representativeness of LLMs: osf.io/preprints/so... 1/
Chair for Data Science in the Economic and Social Sciences at University of Mannheim having lots of fun at #ic2s2 @janajung.bsky.social @wanlo.bsky.social @indiiigo.bsky.social @jrupprec.bsky.social @maximiliankreutner.bsky.social and Stefano Balietti
Really inspiring keynote by @lauraknelson.bsky.social this morning at #IC2S2 discussing when to model and when to generate societies—among many other themes in computational qualitative research!
Before heading to ACL, I'm excited to be at #IC2S2 this week! 🌞 I'll present a related working paper on validating LLM social simulations at the ABM session on Tuesday (11 AM, Vingen 7): indiiigo.github.io/files/GABM_V... (w/ @wanlo.bsky.social @mstrohm.bsky.social and @janalasser.bsky.social)
indiiigo.github.io
Indira Sen@indiiigo.bsky.social · last yr.Do LLMs represent the people they're supposed simulate or provide personalized assistance to? We review the current literature in our #ACL2025 Findings paper and investigating what researchers conclude about the demographic representativeness of LLMs: osf.io/preprints/so... 1/
Do LLMs represent the people they're supposed simulate or provide personalized assistance to? We review the current literature in our #ACL2025 Findings paper and investigating what researchers conclude about the demographic representativeness of LLMs: osf.io/preprints/so... 1/
LLMs can understand political discourse, but can they actually predict votes of real politicians? Excited to share my work at #IC2S2 this week! I will present my poster on Tuesday between 1:30 and 3:30 p.m.
Really excited to also present this work at #IC2S2 next week in Norrköping! 🎉 I'd love to discuss how to produce LLM survey responses at my poster on Wed at 13:30 (Poster Session 2, Poster ID 68) 📊
Georg Ahnert @IC2S2@ahnert.eurosky.social · last yr.LLMs are trained to produce open-ended responses 📝, but most survey items require closed-ended responses instead 📊 This Wed 11:00–12:30 at #ESRA25, I'll discuss the large impact that Answer Production Methods have on prediction results + share recommendations for methods and parameters. 👈
LLMs can generate synthetic survey responses, e.g. for imputation, but how reliable are they? 📋 At #IC2S2, I'll be sharing our research on the robustness of AI-generated responses to perturbations and if they mirror human survey biases. 🤖 Come by my poster on Tuesday between 1:30 and 3:30 p.m.
Very excited to head to #IC2S2 next week! 🎉 In our project, we tested whether a psychological assessment can measure sexism in LLMs, and found that applying such tools to LLMs is not as straightforward as it seems. Find me and my poster at Poster Session 1 (Tue 12:30-14:30) — hope to see you there
LLMs are trained to produce open-ended responses 📝, but most survey items require closed-ended responses instead 📊 This Wed 11:00–12:30 at #ESRA25, I'll discuss the large impact that Answer Production Methods have on prediction results + share recommendations for methods and parameters. 👈
Excited to present our paper with @maxpe.bsky.social, @dgarcia.eu, and @mstrohm.bsky.social next week at #ICWSM! ✨ We extend social simulation with LLMs to a longitudinal setting by fine-tuning Temporal Adapters—here's how: 🧵
We're excited to announce #DataFest Germany 2025 at LMU Munich, March 28-30! In this #hackathon, students from diverse study programs compete for the best insights and visualizations from an exclusive dataset within 48 hours. More info: www.datafest.de/home
DataFest 🇩🇪 2025
Call for applications 2025! 📢 We are glad to announce our call for applications to join the 8th edition of DataFest Germany, which will take place at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich (Marc...
datafest.de
Ready for another Computational Social Science Starter Pack? Here is number 2! More amazing folks to follow! Many students and the next gen represented! go.bsky.app/GoEyD7d
Sharing my first Computational Social Science starter pack! Will grow with time, feel free to nominate and self nominate! go.bsky.app/CYmRvcK
