An Annual Meeting Working Group consists of a small group of meeting attendees who are interested in a common topic and who agree to attend panels and plenary sessions aligned on a similar topic. They convene at the meeting for discussion. The idea is to simulate a working group conference experience amidst APSA panels.

To join a working group, prospective participants can email the contacts below.

Qualitative Bayesian Reasoning Working Group

Tasha Fairfield, tasha.fairfield@gmail.com
Thursday, September 11th, 4:00 – 5:30 pm
Pinnacle Hotel Harbourfront, Port of San Francisco

This working group aims to bring together scholars interested in applying Bayesian reasoning in qualitative and multimethod research, to extend the Qualitative Bayesian Reasoning network coordinated by the organizer, and to complement virtual workshops run through the network.

Bayesian reasoning is an intuitive process that begins by assessing the relative “prior odds” on rival explanations, drawing on any relevant initial information we possess. We then gather evidence. We evaluate the inferential weight of the evidence by asking which hypothesis makes that evidence more expected, and how much more expected relative to rivals. Finally, we update to obtain “posterior odds” on our hypotheses—following Bayes’ rule, we gain more confidence in whichever hypothesis makes the evidence more expected. Bayesian reasoning provides a rigorous foundation for qualitative research that helps us avoid common cognitive biases and better evaluate the inferential import of evidence, while mirroring the way that scholars intuitively tend to approach case study research (Fairfield & Charman 2022).

The working group comprises panels that include scholarship employing qualitative Bayesian reasoning, as well as a recommended pre-conference short-course on the method. Our meetings will provide time for additional dialog on panel papers, as well as discussion of opportunities and challenges scholars face in bringing the method into the mainstream of their political science subfields, and sharing personal experiences of how Bayesian reasoning has informed different aspects of research, from crafting research proposals, to conducting fieldwork and analyzing evidence, to evaluating research published by other scholars.

Schedule:

  • Qualitative Bayesian Reasoning (QMMR B) | Wed Sep 10 2025, 1:30 to 5:30pm | Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC), West Level 2 – West 202
  • Qualitative Bayesian Reasoning in Practice | Thu Sep 11 2025, 2:00 to 3:30pm | Pinnacle Hotel Harbourfront, Port of Hong Kong
  • Racial and Ethnic Politics from a Historical and Events Perspective | Fri Sep 12 2025, 4:00 to 5:30pm | Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC), East Meeting Level – East 10 (V)
  • Understanding International Trade | Sat Sep 13 2025, 2:00 to 3:30pm | Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC), West Level 1 – West 117 (V)
  • Borders of/for State Identity | Sun Sep 14 2025, 8:00 to 9:30am | Marriott Vancouver Pinnacle Downtown, Shaughnessy I

Validation and Generative AI in Political Science Working Group

Joshua Gubler, jgub@byu.edu
Saturday, September 13th, 12:00 – 1:30 pm
Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC), East Meeting Room 6

This working group is co-organized by Political Scientists from BYU’s AI and Social Science lab, including Josh Gubler, Lisa Argyle, and Ethan Busby. It’s intended as a step towards developing a set of validation practices and standards for working with generative AI tools in political science. Work using generative AI tools in political science has dramatically increased, but researchers still lack a set of best practices to validate and justify the use of generative AI tools in their many applications. This leaves scholars, reviewers, funders, and the discipline at large unsure how to evaluate the quality of research using generative AI in political science. There are some isolated discussions of these ideas (mostly focused on model development and selection, see Spirling 2023, Ollion et al. 2024, Lyman et al. 2025, Argyle et al. forthcoming) but as of yet, there is no coordination in the discipline about how to best approach the use of these tools to promote better scientific inquiry. We intend for the scope of this conversation to include best practices and evaluation standards related, but not limited, to: extent and disclosure of AI use in the research process, transparency and replicability, metrics and benchmarks for task-specific performance, and model selection. While we expect such an effort to require an ongoing and multi-pronged conversation, we view this working group as an early step towards constructing such practices, promoting them in the discipline, and constructing a community to work through and develop these standards and ideas.

Schedule:

  • Advances in Information Extraction and Measurement from Image and Video Data | Thu Sep 11 2025, 8:00 to 9:30am | Pan Pacific Vancouver, Pacific Rim 2
  • Artificial Intelligence and Electoral Behavior | Thu Sep 11 2025, 12:00 to 1:30pm | Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC), East Meeting Level – East 14
  • Methodological Innovations in Conflict Research | Thu Sep 11 2025, 12:00 to 1:30pm | Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC), West Level 2 – West 217
  • AI and Policymaking | Fri Sep 12 2025, 8:00 to 9:30am | Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC), West Level 1 – West 120
  • AI in Political Science Education | Fri Sep 12 2025, 12:00 to 1:30pm | Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC), West Level 2 – West 218
  • Political Conflict: Measurement, Analysis, and Prediction | Fri Sep 12 2025, 12:00 to 1:30pm | Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC), West Level 1 – West 116 (V)
  • Information, Identity, Affect and the Development of Policy Views | Fri Sep 12 2025, 12:00 to 1:30pm | Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC), West Level 2 – West 206
  • Experiments Using AI and Experiments on Attitudes towards Refugees | Sat Sep 13 2025, 10:00 to 11:30am | Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC), West Level 3 – West 306
  • Silicon Sampling: Simulating Politics with LLMs | Sat Sep 13 2025, 10:00 to 11:30am | Pan Pacific Vancouver, Pacific Rim 2
  • Automating Insights: Harnessing LLMs for Conflict and Human Rights Research | Sat Sep 13 2025, 12:00 to 1:30pm | Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC), East Meeting Level – East 10 (V)
  • What Are LLMs Good For? | Sat Sep 13 2025, 2:00 to 3:30pm | Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC), West Level 2 – West 214 (V)
  • New Applications of Computational Methods in the Study of Authoritarian Regimes | Sat Sep 13 2025, 2:00 to 3:30pm | Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC), West Level 3 – West 304 & 305
  • Reliable Political Science: Advances and Challenges in Robust Inference | Sat Sep 13 2025, 4:00 to 5:30pm | Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC), East Meeting Level – East 17

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