11ICSSM Traning courses and Workshops
Sociological Engagements with Large Language Models (Carr, Ogden)
Training Course
Since the launch of Chat GPT in November 2022, large language models (LLMs) have proliferated and rapidly become embedded in a range of everyday applications from search engines to media content creation and business functions. More specifically, LLMs feature increasingly on the sociological research landscape, formally embedded in bespoke tools (e.g. for bibliographic management or free text analysis) and informally used for literature reviews, writing abstracts, book reviews and even journal articles. As research agencies become actively interested in LLMs as a means increase ‘value for money’ in social science research, questions about their longer term implications for research funding become pressing.
It is essential that sociologists develop an in-depth, evidence based assessment of LLMs as a research tool and their position within the sociological methods repertoire.
This training session takes a critical sociological perspective on the uses, abuses and potentials of LLMs as a research tool. It will begin with an introductory overview of some of the methodological challenges that LLMs pose for sociological research (30 minutes). The remainder of the session (90 minutes) will offer a curated and supported hands-on session to develop skills for critical engagement and practical experimentation with the use of an LLM as a sociological phenomenon and a sociological method. “
Keywords: Large Language Models/Chatbots, critical interrogation, practical skills
Leslie Carr, University of Southampton, lac@ecs.soton.ac.uk, UK
Jessica Ogden, University of Bristol, jessica.ogden@bristol.ac.uk, UK
Hearing Silences in Qualitative Interview (Hsiung)
Ph.D. Workshop
When conducting qualitative interviews, researchers are ready to hear informants’ narratives that align with common assumptions, idiosyncratic concepts, or their own theoretical frameworks. Accounts falling outside these pre-existing boundaries become inaudible and overlooked. This PhD workshop will illustrate strategies I’ve developed to help students recognize the mechanisms of silencing and hear these silenced accounts.
Keywords: qualitative interview, hearing silences
Ping-Chun Hsiung, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, pc.hsiung@utoronto.ca, Canada