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

Following very successful conferences in Barcelona, Spain, in 2018 and a virtual conference in 2020 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.

The next conference is scheduled to take place in-person in Quito, Ecuador on October 26-29, 2023. The Conference will be hosted by the United Nations Association of Ecuador (UNA-Ecuador) in cooperation with the Data Science Institute of Universidad San Francisco de Quito. The call for abstracts and session proposals closed on March 20, 2023. Make sure to stay informed by signing up to our newsletter.

In this edition, we are thrilled to announce a new partnership with IEEE (Region 9), expanding the impact of the BigSurv initiative. The conference will be preceded by a Big Data challenge and short courses, and exciting keynotes.

Carbon footprint: The conference is exploring various ways to compensate for the carbon footprint of traveling to Quito. We will update you soon through the website and newsletter!

Publication Opportunities: Contributions from the conference will be considered for publication as Conference Proceedings through IEEE Xplore, or in a Special Issue of IEEE LATAM Transactions. 

In the meantime, feel free to browse the past conferences. The BigSurv20 conference program includes many recordings of presentations. Or, 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.