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… 🧵
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
🚨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
🚨 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)
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...
👋 #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/
🚀 New postdoc position for Platform Data & Computational Social Science Join us to drive @gesis.org' efforts around the Digital Services Act (DSA) and conduct research with online platform data 💼 TV-L EG 14 | Location: Cologne 📌 Apply now: www.gesis.org/en/institute... #DSA #CSS #DataScience
Details
GESIS Leibniz Institut für Sozialwissenschaften
gesis.org
🚨 New publication 🚨 Excited to see this published in Findings of #ACL2025, led by @zakashussain.bsky.social. We critically evaluate claims that #LLMs are "just next token predictors" or "just machines" and call for a more measured discussion on LLM cognition. aclanthology.org/2025.finding...
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 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. 👈
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 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.
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/
Joint work w/ @marlutz.bsky.social, Elisa Rogers, @dgarcia.eu and @mstrohm.bsky.social You can find our code and annotated dataset of papers here: github.com/Indiiigo/LLM... We annotated way more things, e.g., LLM used, response format, so please check it out! 5/5
GitHub - Indiiigo/LLM_rep_review: Systematic Review of the Demographic Representativeness of LLMs
Systematic Review of the Demographic Representativeness of LLMs - Indiiigo/LLM_rep_review
github.com
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: 🧵
