CS3 Lab for Computational Survey and Social Science

CS3 lab for Computational Survey and Social Science is an interdisciplinary group of researchers from various fields assembling expert knowledge in survey methodology, UX research, machine learning, NLP, and generative AI. CS3 lab is led by Prof. Dr. Jan Karem Höhne and situated in the Infrastructure and Methods Department at the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW). Together, the members of CS3 lab constantly explore new avenues for extending the methodological and analytical toolkit for substantive social science research. In their research, they utilize online surveys as a comprehensive tool for collecting various digital data about people's attitudes, traits, and behaviors. This includes trace data from mobile apps, search queries, and website visits to, for example, draw conclusions about people’s living conditions, such as pregnancy and parenthood. This is accompanied by research on smartphone sensors, such as accelerometer data for inferring motion conditions and activity levels. Similarly, they introduce qualitative research impulses to quantitative data collection by gathering voice answers to open narrative questions that are recorded through the built-in microphone of smartphones. In doing so, they are going beyond pure text-as-data methods extracting tonal cues to infer affective states in situ. Finally, they engage in social media recruitment strategies and investigate the potential of synthesizing social data through Large Language Models.