Connecting Innovations in Data Science, Survey Research, and the Social Sciences

Following very successful conferences in Barcelona, Spain, in 2018, a virtual conference in 2020 and a conference in Quito, Ecuador in 2023, BigSurv presents an opportunity for computer and data scientists with an interest in social science and data collection and for social scientists, survey methodologists, statisticians and others with an interest in computer and data science to meet, interact, exchange ideas, collaborate, and learn from each other.

BigSurv aims to connect innovations in data science, survey research, and the social sciences. The goal of the series of conferences is to improve the production of statistics on topics with a broader relevance and impact for society. The series combines different perspectives stemming from computer science and social sciences:

• From expertly designed data carefully measuring human behaviors, attitudes, and opinions to organic, electronic data capturing massive quantities of observations about our everyday lives in real-time.
• From generating summary statistics describing entire populations to leveraging fine-grained data informing the context of each observation.
• From the sampling of individuals within populations to considering the implications of “N=all.”
• From applying the Total Survey Error paradigm to new forms of data and adopting a total statistical uncertainty framework that will be needed to encompass the new quality issues associated with Big Data.
• From doing intensive fieldwork by traveling around the country, to leveraging the power of Big data harvesting online.
• From further developments in statistical modeling and machine learning to considering potential applications for AI and large language models (LLMs).

BigSurv is the proud recipient of the 2021 Warren J. Mitofsky Innovators Award from the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR).

Feel free to browse the past conferences. The BigSurv20 conference program includes many recordings of presentations. Have a look at the edited book that was the result of the 2018 conference, or the Social Science Computer Review special issue. Following the 2020 conference, two special issues have been published: one in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A and one in EPJ Data Science. The IEEE conference proceedings for the 2023 conference are also available.