Large Language Models for Social Research: Potentials and Challenges

Indira Sen indira.sen@uni-mannheim.de

Version: MZES Social Science Data Lab, 2025-10-22

Abstract

Large Language Models (LLMs) have the potential to revolutionize the social sciences—for example, by accelerating content analysis or enabling realistic social simulations. In this workshop, I will discuss how LLMs can be applied and audited for social science applications, including the generation of synthetic survey responses and content analysis. I will also address how biases in LLMs can hinder these applications and explore ways to better surface and understand these biases. Finally, I will present a hands-on use case demonstrating how LLMs can be guided using demographic personas for both content analysis and simulated surveys.

📝 Slides 1

About the Instructor

Indira Sen is a Junior Faculty member at the University of Mannheim’s Business School in the Chair of Data Science for the Social and Economic Sciences. Her work lies at the intersection of NLP and Computational Social Science, specifically in developing and evaluating representative and equitable language technology, including Large Language Models.