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Data analysis and modeling pipelines for controlled networked social science experiments

Journal Article · · PLoS ONE
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [2];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [8];  [8];  [8];  [9];  [10];  [11];  [12];  [12]
  1. Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ. (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, VA (United States). Dept. of Computer Science; Escuela Superior Politecnica del Litoral (ESPOL), Guayaquil (Ecuador); OSTI
  2. Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ. (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, VA (United States). Dept. of Statistics
  3. Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States). Computational Science Initiative
  4. Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL (United States). Dept. of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences
  5. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  6. New York Univ. (NYU), NY (United States). Dept. of Epidemiology
  7. Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ. (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, VA (United States). Biocomplexity Inst.
  8. Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ. (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, VA (United States). Biocomplexity Inst. & Initiative
  9. Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY (United States). Dept. of Sociology
  10. Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ. (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, VA (United States). Biocomplexity Inst. & Initiative; Univ. of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA (United States). Dept. of Computer Science
  11. Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ. (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, VA (United States). Dept. of Computer Science; Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ. (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, VA (United States). Discovery Analytics Center
  12. Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ. (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, VA (United States). Discovery Analytics Center

There is large interest in networked social science experiments for understanding human behavior at-scale. Significant effort is required to perform data analytics on experimental outputs and for computational modeling of custom experiments. Moreover, experiments and modeling are often performed in a cycle, enabling iterative experimental refinement and data modeling to uncover interesting insights and to generate/refute hypotheses about social behaviors. The current practice for social analysts is to develop tailor-made computer programs and analytical scripts for experiments and modeling. This often leads to inefficiencies and duplication of effort. In this work, we propose a pipeline framework to take a significant step towards overcoming these challenges. Our contribution is to describe the design and implementation of a software system to automate many of the steps involved in analyzing social science experimental data, building models to capture the behavior of human subjects, and providing data to test hypotheses. The proposed pipeline framework consists of formal models, formal algorithms, and theoretical models as the basis for the design and implementation. We propose a formal data model, such that if an experiment can be described in terms of this model, then our pipeline software can be used to analyze data efficiently. The merits of the proposed pipeline framework is elaborated by several case studies of networked social science experiments.

Research Organization:
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC); Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA); Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA); National Science Foundation (NSF); US Army Research Laboratory (USARL)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0012704
OSTI ID:
1815434
Journal Information:
PLoS ONE, Journal Name: PLoS ONE Journal Issue: 11 Vol. 15; ISSN 1932-6203
Publisher:
Public Library of ScienceCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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