Texas Methods Meeting 2025
The 2025 Texas Methods Meeting (TexMeth) is hosted by the University of Houston's Department of Political Science and the Hobby School of Public Affairs. It will take place on February 21 and 22, 2025 at the University of Houston.
This conference aims to bring together scholars (faculty and graduate students) from Texas and beyond who are doing research in political methodology, broadly defined.
Program
Friday, Feb. 21
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| 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM | Set-up and Early Arrival Student Room (Bates 105) |
| 12:00 – 12:55 PM | Regular Arrival, Lunch & Opening Comments Student Room (Bates 105) |
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1:00 PM – 2:10 PM |
Paper session 1: Large Language Models Patrick Brandt, UT Dallas, “Introducing the ConfliBERT Family of Language Models for Political Science” Connor Jerzak, UT Austin, “Scaling Laws for Expert and LLM Annotations” (See the slides here) Discussant: Sunny Yang, Northeastern University |
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2:15 PM – 3:25 PM |
Paper session 2: Election Applications Mitchell Linegar, CalTech, “Prebunking Election Rumors: Artificial Intelligence Assisted Interventions Increase Confidence in American Elections” Juan-Pablo Micozzi, ITAM, “Party Monitors and Election Integrity Evidence from Argentina” (See the slides here) Discussant: Jae-Hee Jung, University of Houston |
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3:30 – 4:40 PM |
Poster session Amanda Austin, University of Houston, “An Experimental Comparison of AI-Enabled Semi-Structured Interviews and Fixed Surveys: Response Patterns, Quality, and Representation” Ransi Clark, “Solutions to the temporal sparsity of electoral data: Applications in destruction” Andrés Cruz, University of Texas Austin, “Toward more informative robustness checks” Shiladitya Kumar, University of Houston, “The Effect of Political Competition on Candidate Nomination Strategies: Evidence from India” Songeun Emily Lee, “Measuring Voter Preferences for Female Candidates Using Machine Learning” Mitchell Linegar, CalTech, “Using Compositions of LLM Functions to Extract Data from Unstructured Corpuses” Yu-hsien Sung, University of North Texas, “Analyzing Campaign Messages of U.S. District Attorneys” Agustin Vallejo and Maria Perez Arguelles, “Bracing for the Storm: Ideal and Actual Natural Disaster Preparedness in Texas” Amanda Weiss, Yale University, “Sensitive Content Causes Resentment Not Attrition in Survey Experiments” |
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4:45 PM – 5:55 PM |
Paper session 3: Legislative Applications Seo Eun Yang, Northeastern University, “Unveiling Policy Preferences: Leveraging Knowledge Graph Embeddings for Insights into International and Legislative Co-Sponsorship Networks” Michael Kistner, University of Houston, “Measuring Partisanship and Representation in Online Congressional Communication” Discussant: Boris Shor, University of Houston |
| 6:30 PM | Dinner & Reception Eugene’s: 1985 Welch Street, Houston, TX 77019 |
Saturday, Feb. 22
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| 8:00 – 8:45 AM | Early arrival and Breakfast Heritage Room (Bates 201) |
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8:50 – 10:00 AM |
Paper session 4: Experimental Methods Gustavo Diaz, Northwestern University, “Balancing Precision and Retention in Experimental Design” Trent Ollerenshaw, University of Houston, “Repeated Measure Designs are Superior for (Most) Experimental Survey Research Applications” Discussant: Yuki Atsusaka, University of Houston (See the slides here) |
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10:05 – 11:15 AM |
Paper session 5: Measuring and Estimating Matthew Tyler, Rice University, “Bounding causal effects in survey experiments with noncompliance or inattention” (See the slides here) Max Goplerud, UT Austin, “Assessing Robustness of Post-Estimation Quantities of Interest” Discussant: Scott Cook, Texas A&M University |
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11:20 AM - 12:30 PM |
Paper session 6: More Electoral Applications William O’Brochta, Texas Lutheran University, “Determining Politicians’ Electorally-Relevant Caste Membership” Yuki Atsusaka, University of Houston, “When Does Ranked-Choice Voting Reduce Polarization?” (See the slides here) Discussant: Gustavo Diaz, Northwestern University |
Location
The meeting will take place at Bates Building (Heritage Room & Student Room) in UH main campus.
Parking
We will arrange parking permits for the Elgin Street Garage.
Travel
Just a reminder we are not covering travel for this meeting. As in past TexMeth’s you are expected to make your own arrangements and cover your own costs.
We will be starting around 11am on Friday and conclude around noon on Saturday.
Lodging Recommendations
- University of Houston Hilton (on campus)
- Hilton Houston Plaza/Medical Center (5.3 miles from campus)
- Houston Marriott Medical Center (5.3 miles from campus)
- Inter Continental Houston (5.4 miles from campus)
- DoubleTree Houston Medical Center (5.3 miles from campus)
- Westin Houston Medical Center (5.3 miles from campus)
For additional information, please contact Scott Basinger at sjbasing@central.uh.edu or Pablo Pinto at ppinto@central.uh.edu