Felix S. Bethke

Since their rollout, I have made heavy use of the custom GPT tools in ChatGPT. Here is a thread of some of the tools that I use regularly (all of them require ChatGPT 4). I think they are most useful for people doing quantitative social science, but some are more general.

Back in Business or Never Out? Military Coups and Political Militarization in Sub-Sahara Africa - PR... This Spotlight discusses the resurgence of military coups in Sub-Saharan Africa. We argue that an analytical and political focus on coup events misses out on the bigger picture of military influence i...

What explains the recent wave of military coups in Sub-Saharan Africa? In the latest PRIF Spotlight, Markus Bayer (BICC), @felixbethke.bsky.social, Aurel Croissant & Nikitas Scheeder (Heidelberg University) take a look at political militarization as a risk factor.
blog.prif.org/2023/12/28/b...

The bombing of hospitals and local violence dynamics in civil wars: Evidence from Syria – HiCN Can coercive airpower quell a rebellion? Existing literature on the effects of counterinsurgent violence focuses predominantly on casualties resulting from atta

New working paper with Werner Krause & Samer Massoud on the effects of targeting hospitals on violence dynamics in Northwest Syria hicn.org/working-pape...
conflictsky polisky menasky

Kürschners Volkshandbuch. Das hat alles was Du brauchst. Aber bitte mach dann die Y-Achse mit Nullpunkt :D

New data alert! UCDP Conflict Issues Dataset (CID) is here! This global yearly dataset contains 14 832 conflict issues – divided into a four-tier typology with 120 categories at the most disaggregated level – raised by all armed non-state groups active in civil war, 1989-2017. t.co/3hrZxZr6Qo

Open Letter on the Need for Preregistration Transparency in Peer Review [Academics who wish to sign the letter can do so here: https://forms.gle/aVnT6tmufoRKWQxk7] Open Letter on the Need for Preregistration Transparency in Peer Review Dear colleagues, We write to you ...

Please see here for a call for doing more to integrate preregistration into the review process: "Open Letter on the Need for Preregistration Transparency in Peer Review" -- #polisky #econsky

You can sign too -- link is in the letter.

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

My favorite take on this LaTex vs. Word debate is this one:

arxiv.org/pdf/1003.608...

Check page 4 the technical note says it all.

Hi Jay,
thanks for sharing these infos here and on your website. Do you have any updated data yet on the importance of pro-Palestine protests relative to pro-Israel protests in the US, i.e. freq. and size of events? Last info on this I could find was from October 17 on your blog.

Wow, die Ziele sind wirklich niedrig und dabei:
"Als pünktlich gilt ein Zug mit weniger als sechs Minuten Verspätung. Ausgefallene Züge werden in der Statistik nicht berücksichtigt. Auch verpasste Anschlüsse gehen aus ihr nicht hervor."

In other words, it is not really possible to have observed higher replicability than we did.

The evidence provides proof-of-concept that high replicability is achievable. We can't, however, say the extent to which each practice contributed to replicability.

With a total of 16 new discoveries, 16 self-replications, and 48 independent replications, we found high replicability. Independent replication effect sizes were 97% the size of the confirmatory findings.

On the "same direction, p<.05" benchmark, 86% replicated, higher than expected based on power

Our paper "High replicability of newly discovered
social-behavioral findings is achievable" appears today in Nature Human Behaviour.

Just as the large replications provided an inflection point in identifying replicability challenges, this paper does so for solutions.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Polisky - anyone have a good contact at Lucid? Someone who responds fast? Thanks.

I have good contacts with Lucid in Germany, related to survey participent recruitment. But this is probably not what you need. Email me at bethke@prif.org if you need the contact.

Start of the special contributed session on Large Language Models and Causality at CDSM '23. Amit Shama presents some novel results on this exciting topic coming out of Microsoft Research. ➡️ causalscience.org

I couldn't find a tutorial I liked to get students who know R up and running with Python, so I wrote my own! Part 1 is here: andrewhalterman.com/post/python_...
(And if you have a tutorial you like, please let me know!)

Public support for democracy is crucial to prevent backsliding. But existing survey questions focusing on “democracy” may not measure the concept well, as the term “democracy” varies in meaning and may prompt social desirability. polisky 1/3

New draft of paper w/ @davidryanmiller.com !
Quick summary:
- Conjoints mimic political choices that people face
- Possible problem: If people don’t approve of choices, they may abstain
- Findings: This matters!!!
- Big update: New ex w/ tied & different attribute prioritisation
Link: osf.io/4ws7m

Important stuff. Most conjoints force subjects to choose. This can distort results in unpredictable ways.

Apparently ~40% of crowdsource workers use LLMs when completing surveys

Relatively simple fix for text responses: Add Javascript to Qs to prevent pasting

Credit to Jiabi Wang for idea + Kaushal Addanki for code below

github.com/rafmbatista/...

Bild eines aufgerissenen Bodens, Veranstaltungshinweis zur Podiumsdiskussion am 23.10.23, 19 Uhr: Israels Selbstverteidigung: Was sind die Folgen?

Israels Selbstverteidigung: Über die humanitäre Lage in Gaza und die Chancen zur Eindämmung des Konflikts diskutieren heute 19 Uhr im Stream &  im Haus am Dom Claudia Baumgart-Ochse & Michel Friedman, Moderation: A. Schwarzkopf, Frankfurter Rundschau: www.hsfk.de/veranstaltun...

Using admin privileges for today's Dictatorsky shoutout. My study on civilian involvement in military coups. Civilian resources (elite vs. mass-based) shape their conduct in coup politics - from instigation to consolidation. More to come :)

Polisky, CivMilSky
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Dear all, just rediscovering my own website that I put online at the beginning of this year. Needs to be updated but pretty much contains most of the #Stata #dataviz I created in the past three years.

asjadnaqvi.github.io/stata-portfo...

Check it out!

A list of financial data sources, curated for political economy use cases. Official statistics as well as datasets compiled by organizations and academic researchers. Originally assembled for my students, now available on my website. Suggestions welcome!
benjaminbraun.org/teaching/dat...

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) will present its new UCDP Conflict Issues Dataset at the Data4Peace 2023 Conference on October 18 at 10:45 Eastern Time
#conflictsky
Register here:
cic.nyu.edu/events/data-...

Book Cover: Religious Minorities at Risk

Religious Minorities at Risk is available for order at OUP!
In it, we examine how different forms of discrimination & grievance contribute to varying degrees of peaceful & violent mobilization by religious minorities
Use discount code ASFLYQ6 to save 30% at checkout.
polisky | polrel | conflictsky

My book on data management is available #OpenAccess at www.cambridge.org/core/books/d... ! Also, check out the companion webpage at dmbook.org. I hope that the book will be useful for your research and teaching.

Community deprivation drives far-right violence Using disaggregated data for England, Margherita Belgioioso, Christoph Dworschak, and Kristian Skrede Gleditsch show that community deprivation drives far-right violence. Their research reveals how de...

Great to see this out: blog post in The Loop summarising our recent PLOS ONE paper, w/ Margherita Belgioioso & Kristian Gleditsch. PoliSky ConflictSky theloop.ecpr.eu/community-de...

🍾New paper with Roberto Cerina, Neil Ketchley, and Aaron Zelin now accepted at Political Analysis journal! polisky cssky sociology drive.google.com/file/d/1Xv3m...