Looking into the Educational Mirror: Why Computation Is Hardly Being Taught in the Social Sciences, and What to Do About It

Jager, Wander; Abramczuk, Katarzyna; Komendant-Brodowska, Agata; Baczko-Dombi, Anna; Fecher, Benedikt; Sokolovska, Natalia; Spits, Tom

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-34127-5_22

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Smith and Conrey, 2007;Gräbner et al, 2017). Hence it is also a challenge to educate a new generation of social scientists in the relevance of this methodology in understanding social and socio-ecological dynamics (Jager et al, 2020). Such experiences could be gained by special training like summer schools, where colleagues from diverse disciplinary backgrounds are brought together to work on team projects.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formalising theories of human decision-making for agent-based modelling of social-ecological systems: practical lessons learned and ways forward

Schwarz

Dreßler²,

Frank³

et al. 2020

SESMO

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Incorporating representations of human decision-making that are based on social science theories into social-ecological models is considered increasingly important – yet choosing and formalising a theory for a particular modelling context remains challenging. Here, we reflect on our experiences of selecting, formalising and documenting psychological and economic theories of human decision-making for inclusion in different agent-based models (ABMs) of natural resource use. We discuss the challenges related to four critical tasks: How to select a theory? How to formalise a theory and how to translate it into code? How to document the formalisation? In this way, we present a systematic overview of the choices researchers face when including theories of human decision-making in their ABMs, reflect on the choices we made in our own modelling projects and provide guidance for those new to the field. Also, we highlight further challenges regarding the parameterisation and analysis of such ABMs and suggest that a systematic overview of how to tackle these challenges contributes to an effective collaboration in interdisciplinary teams addressing socio-ecological dynamics using models.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formalising theories of human decision-making for agent-based modelling of social-ecological systems: practical lessons learned and ways forward

Schwarz

Dreßler²,

Frank³

et al. 2020

SESMO

Self Cite

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“…For example, although some departments (mainly at graduate schools) teach methods of computational social science, these new techniques are still not part of general sociological curricula. According to Jager et al (2020), programs in computational social science are still quite rare in Europe, both at the bachelor's and master's levels. The latter detects two main reasons for this lack of training: students' mathematics-related anxiety and the intersections.…”

Section: Conceptual Disciplinary and Institutional Tensionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural language processing

Németh

Koltai

2023

Intersections

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Natural language processing (NLP) methods are designed to automatically process and analyze large amounts of textual data. The integration of this new-generation toolbox into sociology faces many challenges. NLP was institutionalized outside of sociology, while the expertise of sociology has been based on its own methods of research. Another challenge is epistemological: it is related to the validity of digital data and the different viewpoints associated with predictive and causal approaches. In our paper, we discuss the challenges and opportunities of the use of NLP in sociology, offer some potential solutions to the concerns and provide meaningful and diverse examples of its sociological application, most of which are related to research on Eastern European societies. The focus will be on the use of NLP in quantitative text analysis. Solutions are provided concerning how sociological knowledge can be incorporated into the new methods and how the new analytical tools can be evaluated against the principles of traditional quantitative methodology.

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