Are Occupations “Bundles of Skills”? Identifying Latent Skill Profiles in the Labor Market Using Topic Modeling Article: Are Occupations “Bundles of Skills”? Identifying Latent Skill Profiles in the Labor Market Using Topic Modeling | Sociological Science | Posted April 13, 2026

🥁New paper!
People talk a lot about skills in relation to technological change, but how do we measure skills?
We show occupational classifications miss their complexity. Using millions of job ads, we model skill profiles and better explain wage inequality ⬇️
sociologicalscience.com/articles-v13...

Doing computational social science research on inequality on your own? This special issue is for you!

We’re inviting submissions for a Historical Social Research issue on “Computational Social Inequality Research in Practice.”

📅 Deadline: 15 May 2026

#CallForPapers #CompSocSci #Inequality

Acquiescence Bias and Criterion Validity: Problems and Potential Solutions for Agree-Disagree Scales - Political Behavior Political Behavior - Scholars frequently measure dispositions like populism, conspiracism, racism, and sexism by asking survey respondents whether they agree or disagree with statements...

New w/@scottclifford.bsky.social.

Lots of work uses agree-disagree scales, and a lit review shows these are 1) frequently just measured in one direction (agree = higher trait) and 2) correlated with each other.

This has potentially big issues for conclusions.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Postdoctoral researcher on applications of AI in sociological research Are you able to lead sociological research into the AI age?

📢WORK! At the Sociology department of @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social we are hiring a postdoc who will work on applications of AI in sociological research. Join our vibrant-yet-cohesive research community doing cutting-edge research. Please share or apply! www.uu.nl/en/organisat...

✨ I’ve just started as an Assistant Professor at Sciences Po!

After 9 years living abroad, I’m returning to my home country. I’ll miss many things—especially my fantastic colleagues at @uva.nl and @maastrichtu.bsky.social —but I’m excited to begin this new position at @cris-sciencespo.bsky.social!

Explaining Perceptions of Unfair Treatment: Theoretical Arguments and Empirical Evidence from Ethnic Minorities, Women and Students - AMCIS In this lecture, Prof. Dr. Claudia Diehl discusses to what extent the various mechanisms that have been proposed to explain perceived ethnic discrimination apply to other disadvantaged groups and othe...

On Thursday we host Claudia Diehl for the year's last AMCIS Seminar: "Explaining Perceptions of Unfair Treatment: Theoretical Arguments & Empirical Evidence from Ethnic Minorities, Women & Students"

Info & registration: amcis.uva.nl/content/even...

@codyhochstenbach.bsky.social @aissr.bsky.social

Les « jeux de la réplication », ou quand la science s’amuse à se reproduire Une vingtaine de chercheurs ont traqué, le 3 octobre, les failles de plusieurs articles de sciences sociales parus dans des revues de renom.

Dans un contexte où la #Reproductibilité est clé pour la crédibilité de la science, ces journées rassemblent des scientifiques pour tenter de reproduire des études publiées. 👏
Bravo à toutes et tous !
👉 Lire l'article : www.lemonde.fr/sciences/art...

Every time I think I’ve seen every possible use of administrative registry data, someone proves me wrong. Again ☺️

‘Clear parallels’ with Windrush as UK-born toddler denied passport Campaigners say lessons not being learned as three-year-old’s mother is asked to prove right to free NHS treatment

This is not an anomaly - it’s an echo of the injustices we saw in Windrush.

A UK‑born child denied a British passport and asked to prove her right to NHS care is a stark reminder that UK policy still fails Caribbean communities and basic principles of equality.
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

How are cultural tastes stratified? Evidence from library borrowing for the entire population of Denmark Abstract. Research shows that cultural tastes are socially stratified. Yet, most of this research relies on small-sample surveys and includes only a few di

➡️New paper out with amazing data: library borrowings of the entire population of Denmark!
If cultural tastes are always stratified, the type of stratification depends on the wider inequalities within a context
#EH_Blaabæk #S_Friedman #MM_Jæger #A_Reeves

academic.oup.com/esr/advance-...

✨New (open access) article in ESR with Gerbert Kraaykamp!

We demonstrate that cultural capital is positively associated with a higher occupational position due to access to more resourceful networks.

Read here: doi.org/10.1093/esr/...

My favorite type of infographic.

How Americans View AI and Its Impact on People and Society Americans are worried about using AI more in daily life, seeing harm to human creativity and relationships. But they’re open to AI use in weather forecasting, medicine and other data-heavy tasks.

A growing share of Americans know about and are using AI tools. Yet many are worried about the growing role of AI in various aspects of our lives.

Read all about it in this great new report from my @pewresearch.org colleagues:

Keynote 2️⃣ of the TASKS VII Conference #TASKSVII2025

🗣️ @thijsbol.bsky.social of @aissr.bsky.social presents: Are occupations bundles of skills? Identifying latent skill profiles in the labor market using topic modeling. Co-authored w/ @labussieremarie.bsky.social

🔗Info: www.liser.lu/events/TASKS...

Plane to purgatory: how Trump’s deportation program shuttles immigrants into lawless limbo 44,000 immigrants, 1,700 flights, 100 days: a Guardian investigation of leaked flight data and government detention data reveals the inhumane journey of immigrants shuttled around and outside the US

We analyzed leaked data for rare look at the winding journeys of more than 44,000 immigrants detained or deported by the Trump administration... and found that people are being moved around in unprecedented and irregular ways. w/ @wcraft.bsky.social

www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

The social sciences face a replicability crisis. A key determinant of replication success is statistical power. We assess the power of political science research by collating over 16,000 hypothesis tests from about 2,000 articles in 46 areas of the discipline. Under generous assumptions, we show that quantitative research in political science is greatly underpow- ered: the median analysis has about 10% power, and only about 1 in 10 tests have at least 80% power to detect the consensus effects reported in the literature. We also find substantial heterogeneity in tests across research areas, with some being characterized by high power but most having very low power. To contextualize our findings, we survey political methodologists to assess their expectations about power levels. Most methodologists greatly overestimate the statistical power of political science research.

The pretty draft is now online.

Link to paper (free): www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10....

Our replication package starts from the raw data and we put real work into making it readable & setting it up so people could poke at it, so please do explore it: dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtm...

There is so much quote from this article.

“There was a sense in some narratives that success was down to individuals, rather than the sector holding responsibility for creating conducive working conditions for academics to flourish and and realize potentials.”

With the recent diff-in-diffs upheaval, you may have asked:

When can I get away with using two-way fixed effects?

If so, check out this new working paper!

It proposes tests for differences in dynamic treatment effects over cohorts, which allows you to explore when TWFE is likely to be biased.

New preprint 💥

In 2020, @ianlundberg.bsky.social wrote a fabulous paper showing that cousin correlations don’t have to imply extended family effects.

I put that idea to the test using NLSY data—and he’s right! The patterns fit a dynamic first-order Markov model.

#sociology

osf.io/preprints/so...

Du poids du racismes dans les inégalités de revenus en France

Immigrant–native pay gap driven by lack of access to high-paying jobs - Nature Data from nine European and North American countries reveal that the disparity in earnings between immigrants and natives is largely a result of segregation of immigrant workers into lower-paying jobs...

IN OTHER NEWS: check out our new COIN paper on immigrant--native pay gaps in advanced economies published in @nature.com this afternoon! Specifically, we study the relative contribution of within-job unequal pay vs between-job segregation to earnings disparities across immigrant generations. 1/9

🚨New paper out🚨
First evidence on the returns of citizenship acquisition in Italy

🔎 Naturalized do better, but not because of naturalization
🔗 OA in IOM doi.org/10.1111/imig...

w/ @filippogch.bsky.social @rafgrotti.bsky.social ‬@stefanischerer.bsky.social ‬@zamberlanna.bsky.social

#MigCitSky

Academia seen by Sørensen (1996)

Excited to be at the #IMISCOE conference in Paris this week! Will present work on intersectionality and stereotypes with new data from the @equalstrength.bsky.social project in the last session on Friday. Last session is the best session right?

@equalstrength.bsky.social team presenting at IMISCOE in Paris. @jeremykuhnle.bsky.social and @danielcapistrano.com show sizeable variation in the recognition of ethnic minority names, depending on both context and respondent demographics, confirming careful pre-testing is crucial in experiments.

🎓 Not just what students expect—but how sure they are.

Dr. Stephen Morgan’s #Socius study shows that tapping uncertainty improves predictions of #college access. Insightful for #SurveyMethods and #SociologyOfEducation.

Read: doi.org/10.1177/2378...

Expert commentary on proposed amendments to UK citizenship law extending naturalisation period from 5 to 10 years: back to the future reviving Labour's proposals from 2008, and with a similar lack of evidence base for this extension....

Integrating Generative Artificial Intelligence into Social Science Research: Measurement, Prompting, and Simulation - Thomas Davidson, Daniel Karell, 2025 Generative artificial intelligence (AI) offers new capabilities for analyzing data, creating synthetic media, and simulating realistic social interactions. This...

Attn: the special issue of SMR on Generative AI in Sociology is now online. The whole issue is fire, but the introduction by @thomasdavidson.bsky.social and Danny Karell is a must read, covering prompting, measurement, and simulations. It's a road map for soc sci research in the genAI era. +

Turnout for the Italian referendum to reduce the residency requirement for #citizenship from 10 to 5 years was 30%, falling short of the 50% threshold needed for validity.

A breakout of the results based on earlier discussions with @maartenpvink.bsky.social .and @yajnagovind.bsky.social.

New paper with @fabriberna.bsky.social - part of my PhD thesis!

Why are the negative educational consequences of parental separation stronger among high-SES children?

→ When high-SES parents separate, they lose their ability to compensate for their child’s low genetic propensity for education 🧬👪