Research Areas
- Anchoring Vignettes (for interpersonal incomparability)Methods for interpersonal incomparability, when respondents (from different cultures, genders, countries, or ethnic groups) understand survey questions in different ways; for developing theoretical definitions of complicated concepts apparently definable only by example (i.e., "you know it when you see it").
- Automated Text AnalysisAutomated and computer-assisted methods of extracting, organizing, understanding, conceptualizing, and consuming knowledge from massive quantities of unstructured text.
- Causal InferenceMethods for detecting and reducing model dependence (i.e., when minor model changes produce substantively different inferences) in inferring causal effects and other counterfactuals. Matching methods; "politically robust" and cluster-randomized experimental designs; causal bias decompositions.
- Event Counts and DurationsStatistical models to explain or predict how many events occur for each fixed time period, or the time between events. An application to cabinet dissolution in parliamentary democracies which united two previously warring scholarly literature. Other applications to international relations and U.S. Supreme Court appointments.
- Ecological InferenceInferring individual behavior from group-level data: The first approach to incorporate both unit-level deterministic bounds and cross-unit statistical information, methods for 2x2 and larger tables, Bayesian model averaging, applications to elections, software.
- Missing Data, Measurement Error, Differential PrivacyStatistical methods to accommodate missing information in data sets due to survey nonresponse, missing variables, or variables measured with error or with error added to protect privacy. Applications and software for analyzing electoral, compositional, survey, time series, and time series cross-sectional data.
- Qualitative ResearchHow the same unified theory of inference underlies quantitative and qualitative research alike; scientific inference when quantification is difficult or impossible; research design; empirical research in legal scholarship.
- Rare EventsHow to save 99% of your data collection costs; bias corrections for logistic regression in estimating probabilities and causal effects in rare events data; estimating base probabilities or any quantity from case-control data; automated coding of events.
- Survey ResearchHow surveys work and a variety of methods to use with surveys. Surveys for estimating death rates, why election polls are so variable when the vote is so predictable, and health inequality.
- Anchoring Vignettes (for interpersonal incomparability)
- Incumbency AdvantageProof that previously used estimators of electoral incumbency advantage were biased, and a new unbiased estimator. Also, the first systematic demonstration that constituency service by legislators increases the incumbency advantage.
- Chinese CensorshipWe reverse engineer Chinese information controls -- the most extensive effort to selectively control human expression in the history of the world. We show that this massive effort to slow the flow of information paradoxically also conveys a great deal about the intentions, goals, and actions of the leaders. We downloaded all Chinese social media posts before the government could read and censor them; wrote and posted comments randomly assigned to our categories on hundreds of websites across the country to see what would be censored; set up our own social media website in China; and discovered that the Chinese government fabricates and posts 450 million social media comments a year in the names of ordinary people and convinced those posting (and inadvertently even the government) to admit to their activities. We found that the goverment does not engage on controversial issues (they do not censor criticism or fabricate posts that argue with those who disagree with the government), but they respond on an emergency basis to stop collective action (with censorship, fabricating posts with giant bursts of cheerleading-type distractions, responding to citizen greviances, etc.). They don't care what you think of them or say about them; they only care what you can do.
- Mexican Health Care EvaluationAn evaluation of the Mexican Seguro Popular program (designed to extend health insurance and regular and preventive medical care, pharmaceuticals, and health facilities to 50 million uninsured Mexicans), one of the world's largest health policy reforms of the last two decades. Our evaluation features a new design for field experiments that is more robust to the political interventions and implementation errors that have ruined many similar previous efforts; new statistical methods that produce more reliable and efficient results using fewer resources, assumptions, and data, as well as standard errors that are as much as 600% smaller; and an implementation of these methods in the largest randomized health policy experiment to date. (See the Harvard Gazette story on this project.)
- Presidency Research; Voting BehaviorResolution of the paradox of why polls are so variable over time during presidential campaigns even though the vote outcome is easily predictable before it starts. Also, a resolution of a key controversy over absentee ballots during the 2000 presidential election; and the methodology of small-n research on executives.
- Informatics and Data SharingReplication Standards New standards, protocols, and software for citing, sharing, analyzing, archiving, preserving, distributing, cataloging, translating, disseminating, naming, verifying, and replicating scholarly research data and analyses. Also includes proposals to improve the norms of data sharing and replication in science.
- International ConflictMethods for coding, analyzing, and forecasting international conflict and state failure. Evidence that the causes of conflict, theorized to be important but often found to be small or ephemeral, are indeed tiny for the vast majority of dyads, but are large, stable, and replicable wherever the ex ante probability of conflict is large.
- Legislative RedistrictingThe definition of partisan symmetry as a standard for fairness in redistricting; methods and software for measuring partisan bias and electoral responsiveness; discussion of U.S. Supreme Court rulings about this work. Evidence that U.S. redistricting reduces bias and increases responsiveness, and that the electoral college is fair; applications to legislatures, primaries, and multiparty systems.
- Mortality StudiesMethods for forecasting mortality rates (overall or for time series data cross-classified by age, sex, country, and cause); estimating mortality rates in areas without vital registration; measuring inequality in risk of death; applications to US mortality, the future of the Social Security, armed conflict, heart failure, and human security.
- Teaching and AdministrationPublications and other projects designed to improve teaching, learning, and university administration, as well as broader writings on the future of the social sciences.
- Incumbency Advantage
Recent Papers
- UnbiasedPrivacy
- QuickCode
- OpenDP: Developing Open Source Tools for Differential Privacy
- PrivacyUnbiased
- PSI (Ψ): a Private Data Sharing Interface
- Compactness: An R Package for Measuring Legislative District Compactness If You Only Know it When You See It
- Readme2: An R Package for Improved Automated Nonparametric Content Analysis for Social Science
- booc.io: Software for an Education System with Hierarchical Concept Maps
- Perusall
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- Cluster Analysis of Participant Responses for Test Generation or Teaching (2nd)
- Participant Grouping for Enhanced Interactive Experience (4th)
- Instructional Support Platform for Interactive Learning Platforms (2nd)
- Instructional Support Platform for Interactive Learning Platforms
- System for Estimating a Distribution of Message Content Categories in Source Data (2nd)
- Cluster Analysis of Participant Responses for Test Generation or Teaching
- Systems and Methods for Keyword Determination and Document Classification from Unstructured Text
- Participant Grouping for Enhanced Interactive Experience (3rd)
- Participant Grouping for Enhanced Interactive Experience (2nd)
- Stimulating Online Discussion in Interactive Learning Environments
- QuickCode
- Perusall
- OpenScholar (acquired by Monomyth Group)
- Thresher (acquired by Two Six Technologies, a Carlyle Company; the story)
- Crimson Hexagon (merged with Brandwatch, acquired by Cision; the story)
- Learning Catalytics (acquired by Pearson; the story)
News story: "Entrepreneurial Academia with Gary King"
Presentations
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Books
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