Julio S. Solís Arce (Gov Department), "Ethnographic Perspectives: A Large-Scale Cross-Cultural Dataset" (w/ Matthew Lee Chen and Leo Saenger)
The study of culture in social science research increasingly relies on large-scale data, yet existing resources remain constrained by limited source diversity and a lack of detailed information on human societies. In this project, we are building and introducing a novel cross-cultural dataset that incorporates a broad set of cultural, economic, and social attributes derived from diverse ethnographic sources, including accounts from the eHRAF World Cultures database and the Hathitrust Digital Library, as well as anthropological journal publications available on JSTOR. We automate the variable coding process by leveraging recent advancements in retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems. We then develop a pipeline to validate both our retrieval and generative processes using human evaluations and historical corrections to existing ethnographic datasets. In addition to providing the research community with new data to illuminate pre-industrial societal characteristics, we establish a systematic framework for variable coding that researchers can adapt for broader cultural analysis.
The Applied Statistics Workshop (Gov 3009) meets all academic year, Wednesdays, 12pm-1:30pm, in CGIS K354. This workshop is a forum for advanced graduate students, faculty, and visiting scholars to present and discuss methodological or empirical work in progress in an interdisciplinary setting. The workshop features a tour of Harvard's statistical innovations and applications with weekly stops in different fields and disciplines and includes occasional presentations by invited speakers.
All interested Harvard affiliates are invited to attend.