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Peter Damgaard

@peterdamgaard.bsky.social
555 followers 602 following 22 posts

Assistant professor (TT). Department of Political Science and Public Management. University of Southern Denmark. Website: peterdamgaard.com

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Reposted by Peter Damgaard
jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 29/09/2026
"Replication crisis" reforms like preregistration & pre-analysis plans were developed to control false positives in experimental research. Does that work in observational studies? Our new paper in Sociological Methods & Research argues for a different approach. 🧵 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
A Replication Framework for Observational Research: From Specification Restriction to Specification Expansion
Jonathan Ben-Menachem https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8092-0848 jbenmenachem@gmail.com, Ari Galper https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7909-8837, and Nic Fishman
Abstract
Sociology has remained relatively insulated from debates about the “replication crisis.” Heeding calls to consider replication more deeply, we introduce a distinction between two types of research reforms that have emerged in the wake of the crisis: specification-restricting and specification-expanding reforms. Specification restriction is often promoted as a way to increase the repeatability of research findings by controlling false positives. We argue that this statistical justification is less compelling in observational contexts—where the assumptions licensing false-positive control are harder to sustain and rigid ex ante analytical commitments can instead enshrine fragile specifications—than in experimental contexts. We further argue that apparently low replication rates do not necessarily imply a high prevalence of false positive findings. Instead, we propose a replication framework centered on specification-expanding reforms, stronger incentives for confirmatory research, and meta-analysis. This approach equips sociologists to assess the repeatability of findings and build a more cumulative discipline.
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AP Stylebook @apstylebook.com · 23/09/2026
Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics.
apnews.com
https://apnews.com/article/openai-safety-ai-framework-089e75b95bc935af092da7b79d92706d
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Voilà: Francis Gagnon @chezvoila.com · 09/09/2024
In the coming days, I will tweak the starter pack to make sure it includes dataviz people who post often on Bluesky. Initially, I had put some big names regardless of posting frequency, but the whole point is to create a vibrant community. go.bsky.app/R3nSyyy
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Matt Graham @mattgraham.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
🚨NEW PAPER🚨 Covariate adjustment is a valuable tool for analyzing experiments but is vulnerable to abuse. We assess practice in political science and recommend some good practices. Coming soon to the Journal of Experimental Political Science. Preprint: osf.io/cdmsx_v1
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Matt Grossmann @mattgrossmann.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Citizens accept some ineligible access to social programs in order to provide full access for the eligible, but most weigh a trade-off. republicans accept less fraud for wider access onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Administrative Burden and the Access–Fraud Trade‐Off
Administrative burden represents political choices embedded in policy design that affect how people perceive and experience government. While policymakers frequently invoke fraud prevention to justif...
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Jonathan Horowitz @jonathanhorowi1.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
OLS is unreasonably effective; there is no reason why it should work this well, but it does. Some propensity-style methods beat it (with additional computational power), but others don't and probably should be skipped. Flexible ML estimators are typically needed to make it worthwhile over OLS.
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Will Lowe @conjugateprior.org · 29/08/2026
Whenever I look at the items on one of those X-measure batteries, the items are all like 1. So, X? 2. [coughs] X [coughs]? 3. How do you feel about that letter before Y? 4. And, err, the one after W? 5. Eeeecks? 6. You, ah, like crosses? 7. How often do you mark a spot? 8. Is that you Malcom?
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Matthías Aron Ólafsson @matthiasaolafsson.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
If you are interested in the larger historical currents behind the EU referendum and Icelandic history generally:
engelsbergideas.com
The myth of Icelandic insularity
As Icelanders prepare to vote on resuming EU talks, the island's elites have spent centuries managing external influence to their advantage.
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Roman Senninger @rsenninger.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Does losing an election affect politicians' democratic attitudes? A large literature documents a winner–loser gap among voters, but evidence on political elites was long scarce. A series of recent studies has narrowed this gap. A thread on the state of the evidence. 🧵
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Daniel A. N. Goldstein @daniel-a-n-goldstein.com · 12/08/2026
Are politicians gatekeepers of democracy? Will they reject candidates for party leadership or coalitions to protect it? We ran pre-registered experiments on 2,000 Norwegian politicians. They do gatekeep, but it’s conditional. osf.io/preprints/so...
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Jorge Liboreiro @jorgeliboreiro.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Pedro Sánchez has sent a letter to the EU institutions complaining about the political reaction of some member states to the migratory crisis in Ceuta. “In the current international context, the European Union cannot afford this kind of selfish, polarising and unlawful reaction.” 🧵
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Stuart Hoddinott @stuarthoddinott.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
This is a genuinely exciting announcement about Burnham's intention for public service reform There are some potentially massive changes to the way that services are funded and operate A few things that jumped out at me 👇 www.gov.uk/government/p...
gov.uk
Rewiring the State – Cabinet Statement (HTML)
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Alexander Wuttke @kunkakom.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Genuinely interested in your views: What is the future of teaching statistical programming language for data science in the age of AI? Will we even still teach programming R or Python?
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Arnout van de Rijt @arnoutvanderijt.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
"teacher-induced learning inequalities are mainly driven by unequal exposure to highly qualified teachers, rather than unequal returns to qualifications." Just out in our journal, @sociologicalsci.bsky.social sociologicalscience.com/articles-v13...
sociologicalscience.com
Teacher Sorting and Inequalities in Student Achievement: Unequal Exposures and Differential Returns to Teacher Qualifications
Article: Teacher Sorting and Inequalities in Student Achievement: Unequal Exposures and Differential Returns to Teacher Qualifications | Sociological Science | Posted June 30, 2026
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Malte Elson @malte.the100.ci · 20/06/2026
🧵 New PubPeer comment. @cskay.bsky.social & Vlasceanu (2026) propose ECLAIR, an item battery to catch AI-driven bots. We read the preprint in our journal club & found it very interesting, but our read raised several concerns that we posted to PubPeer. pubpeer.com/publications...
pubpeer.com
PubPeer - A scale for detecting LLM-generated responses in online surv...
There are comments on PubPeer for publication: A scale for detecting LLM-generated responses in online survey research (2026)
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turgut keskintürk @tkeskinturk.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
a new working paper with Chris Johnston & @stephenvaisey.com! we study issue opinions among a novel sample of 10-12-year-olds, showing that children, contrary to received wisdom, express reasonably structured preferences. a working paper here: tkeskinturk.github.io/poldevelopment.pdf
The Emerging Structure of Political Preferences in Childhood

Turgut Keskintürk, Christopher D. Johnston, Stephen Vaisey

June, 2026

Research on political development has largely overlooked the opinions children form before adolescence, and paid even less attention to their views on specific issues. In this article, we present an original survey of children aged 10 to 12, conducted in 2024–2025, that measures children’s opinions on several policy issues alongside evaluations of the 2024 presidential candidates and the two major parties. To situate children’s responses in context, we benchmark children against one of their parents, surveyed concurrently, and against the 2024 American National Election Study. We find that children express policy opinions more often than they identify with a party, that these opinions organize along the same left-right axis as adults, if less tightly, and that evaluations of candidates and parties anchor this emerging structure. These findings suggest that children form issue opinions far earlier than scholars have assumed, calling for renewed attention to childhood as a formative and consequential site of political development.
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Kristof Dhont @kristofdhontphd.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Our review on #speciesism is now out in Nature Reviews Psychology. rdcu.be/foTDx We synthesise research on how people think about animals, morally rank species, and justify animal exploitation and consumption. A pleasure to work on this with @gordonhodsonphd.bsky.social @springernature.com
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Yamil Ricardo Velez @yamilrvelez.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Why do arguments often change people’s beliefs without changing their attitudes? In a new APSR with @scottclifford.bsky.social and @patrickpliu.bsky.social, we point to belief relevance: arguments are more persuasive when they grapple with the idiosyncratic reasons people hold their political views.
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Danbischof @danbischof.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
I like this @thejop.bsky.social : "We are now implementing a system in which the editorial team has the right to not consider submissions from authors who have failed to review for the journal three or more times, when invited to do so by the editorial team."
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Pietro Biroli @pietrobiroli.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Anyone has experience with Prolific asking questions 2 or 3 weeks apart? how's the attrition?
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Marc Sabatier Hvidkjær @marchvidkjaer.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
NEW DANISH GOVERNMENT IS (FINALLY) FORMED - Who are they? - What's the agenda? - What does this mean for European politics?
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Peter Damgaard @peterdamgaard.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Very interesting talk for anyone interested in belief formation, persuasion or information provision experiments more generally!
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Omar Wasow @owasow.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
“Writing is hard.” Thrilled to share that this simple idea led to a new paper in Political Analysis! Where most text methods focus on content, I test if expression is also effortful action. I find simple measures like character counts reveal attitudes and predict voting. cup.org/4cUmoXi 1/
Text as Behavior
Text as Behavior published in Political Analysis

by Omar Wasow

Abstract

Text analysis typically focuses on content—such as sentiment or topic—but expression is also a form of effortful action. Building on this insight, I propose using simple features of open-ended tasks to study text as behavior. This approach treats expression, such as writing, as cognitively, emotionally and temporally “costly” for subjects but inexpensive for researchers. I show basic statistics like the number of characters can approximate effort and significantly improve estimation of quantities of interest, including candidate choice, the probability of turning out to vote and psychological states about which a subject may not be fully aware. Further, these methods can convert nonresponse into informative data; validate survey instruments; serve as mechanism checks; be hard for a subject to “game”; work across different languages and analogize well to real-world situations. In sum, text as behavior can help address a range of issues related to quantifying attitudes and actions.
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American Political Science Review @apsrjournal.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
From our FirstView: Partisan Expressive Responding: Lessons from Two Decades of Research by @mattgraham.bsky.social doi.org/10.1017/S000...
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Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory @jpart1991.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
New Issue Highlight: Could better teaching be as simple as giving teachers the right information—no rewards, no pressure, no oversight?
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Jamie Cummins @jamiecummins.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
1/ "Silicon samples" are becoming more and more common in research and polling. One problem: depending on the analytic decisions made, you can basically get these samples to show any effect you want. The updated version of this preprint is now online! THREAD🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2509.13397
arxiv.org
The threat of analytic flexibility in using large language models to simulate human data
Social scientists are now using large language models to create "silicon samples": synthetic datasets intended to stand in for human respondents. However, producing these samples requires many analyti...
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Klaus Pforr @klauspforr.eurosky.social · 18/04/2026
👇Staggering results of expansion of early public children on female employment in Germany
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Political Science Research and Methods @psrm.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
📰 Do the effects of partisan media fade quickly or accumulate over time? ➡️ Using multiwave experiments, M Baum et al. show a single exposure can have effects lasting up to a week, while cumulative effects are hard to detect www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView
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Roman Senninger @rsenninger.bsky.social · 04/04/2026
A fascinating data-driven look at what blocked shipping routes mean for global trade. @economist.com
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Joris Frese @fresejoris.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
📄Published Today in Nature: 500 researchers reproduced 100 studies across the social & behavioral sciences to assess their analytical robustness (led by @balazsaczel.bsky.social & @szaszibarnabas.bsky.social). Article: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Preprint: osf.io/preprints/me... TLDR: 1/11
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Kerstin Ostermann @kostermann.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
How costly is apprenticeship dropout—and for whom? Using an IV approach, our new @europeansocreview.bsky.social article finds strong income penalties, but only for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. My great coauthors patzinaalex.bsky.social & @katymorris.bsky.social 💖 tinyurl.com/tk4nkdb3
Screenshot of the articles title "Stratified Scars: social inequality in the labour market consequences of apprenticeship dropout" and the abstract: While the association between apprenticeship dropout and negative labour market consequences is well documented, the causal link and social stratification in this effect are less clear. Using georeferenced German administrative data and a conditional instrumental variable approach that exploits distance between place of residence and large firms, we find negative financial consequences but show that the dropout penalty is entirely concentrated among individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds. We further show that these stratified scars partly reflect unequal educational reenrolment rates and unequal employment outcomes among dropouts who do not reenrol. Our results highlight the potential of policies targeting higher graduation rates to reduce social inequality and suggest social advantage buffers the negative financial consequences of apprenticeship dropout, even in institutional settings with strong links between credentials and labour market outcomes.
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Martin Naunov @naunovmartin.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
Pleased to see this one out in its JOP-formatted version @thejop.bsky.social www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
journals.uchicago.edu
University of Chicago Press Journals: Cookie absent
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Mary Feeney @mkfeeney.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
Looking for insights on Open Peer Review - in particular, a person wanting to be open though the journal is not? For ex: If I publish in a double blind journal, but decide to post the peer review & editorial docs in a space like OSF. Is this unethical, illegal, best practice?
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David Slichter @davidslichter.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
My personal rule for IVs is that, if there's really only one reason why Z and Y are correlated, then you should be able to tell me Z and Y, and I'd be able to figure out what X is without you telling me. (1/n)
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Asmus Leth Olsen @asmusletholsen.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
We got a paper in @pspolisci.bsky.social l on public administration beyond public administration journals A substantial share of quantitatively oriented PA research is being produced in top economics journals! www.cambridge.org/core/journal... @karlemilbendtsen.bsky.social Five stylized facts:
cambridge.org
Public Administration Beyond Public Administration Journals | PS: Political Science & Politics | Cambridge Core
Public Administration Beyond Public Administration Journals
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American Journal of Political Science (AJPS) @ajpseditor.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
You and whose economy? Group-based retrospection in economic voting by Christoffer Hentzer Dausgaard is now available in Early View. @chdausgaard.bsky.social ajps.org/2026/03/20/y...
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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 21/03/2026
Psychology has a whole cottage industry in which people come up with some construct that is essentially "attitudes/beliefs/expectations/feelings about X", and then the central claim is that this construct is a super important determinant of future X outcomes.>
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Alex Coppock @aecoppock.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
New paper with Don Green and @ethanvporter.bsky.social in the QJPS. After much deliberation, we went with a title that just states the result. 📝 journal: www.emerald.com/qjps/article...
abstract: While attempts to change Americans’ partisanship via persuasive treatments largely fail, partisanship can and does change over time. In this paper, the authors first confirm, via survey and field experiments, that typical campaign messaging in the United States does not budge partisanship. The authors then present experiments in which participants encounter extraordinary hypothetical scenarios (e.g. one party causes economic collapse) before reporting what their partisanship would be under such circumstances. Twelve percent of partisans imagine switching parties in the pro-out-party hypothetical conditions, compared with 5% in the control hypotheticals in which the status quo persists, for a seven-percentage point (SE 1.5 points) difference. These hypothetical shifts are on par with the largest changes in American macropartisanship ever recorded. While the act of ruminating on hypothetical scenarios is not followed by changes in partisanship measured post-treatment, the evidence suggests that extraordinary world events may be able to shift partisan affiliation.
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Alexander Wuttke @kunkakom.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
Do conjoint/factorial/vignette experiments reflect choices in the real world? Are hypothetical scenarios in the artificial survey context externally valid? Do hypothetical bias, intention-behavior gap and social desirability biases undermine validity? Two cautionary studies on this question:
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samuel mehr @mehr.nz · 19/03/2026
out now in Science: @loganjames.bsky.social collected pairs of sounds in 16 species where we *know* which sound is more attractive (to that species) he played them to ppl on themusiclab.org, asking, in each pair, which was nicer. humans agreed w other animals doi.org/10.1126/science.aea1202
cOMPaRatiVe cOGNitiONHumans share acousticpreferences with other animalsLogan S. James1,2,3,4* Sarah C. Woolley 1,2, Jon T. Sakata1,2,Courtney B. Hilton5,6, Michael J. Ryan3,4, Samuel A. Mehr5,7,8Many animals produce courtship sounds, and receivers prefersome sounds over others. Shared ancestry and convergentevolution may generate similarities in preference across speciesand underlie Darwin’s conjecture that some animals “havenearly the same taste for the beautiful as we have.” In this study,we show that humans share acoustic preferences with a rangeof animals, that the strength of human preferences correlateswith that in other animals, and that humans respond fasterwhen in agreement with animals. Furthermore, we foundgreatest agreement in preference for adorned, ancestral, andlower-frequency sounds. humans’ music listening experiencewas associated with preferences. These results are consistentwith theories arguing that biases in processing sculpt acousticpreferences, and they confirm Darwin’s century-old hunchabout the conservation of aesthetics in nature
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Peter Nedergaard @peternedergaard.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
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Peter Damgaard @peterdamgaard.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
Fascinating paper on supply-side factors of negativity bias, misinformation and misperceptions. Also interesting measurements of accuracy of reporting and negativity bias of specific media orgs (e.g. CNN, Fox News).
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Yamil Ricardo Velez @yamilrvelez.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
Conditionally accepted at the APSR (w/ @scottclifford.bsky.social & @patrickpliu.bsky.social): Why does political information so often change beliefs but NOT attitudes? We highlight the role of belief relevance, or the extent to which beliefs bear on attitudes.
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Oleg Urminsky @olegurminsky.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
When you collect data online, are the results from humans or AI? In a project led by Booth PhD student Grace Zhang, we estimate the prevalence of AI agents on commonly used survey platforms: osf.io/preprints/ps... 🧵
osf.io
OSF
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Peter Damgaard @peterdamgaard.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
I'm also curious about this!
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Alex Coppock @aecoppock.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Writing simulations in DeclareDesign just went from "I should do that, but it's kind of a lot of work" to extremely easy
Screenshot of claude just writing a design no trouble
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
#rstats Here's a useful guide to creating publication-ready #ggplot figures to journal specifications, which is often quite fiddly. jaquent.github.io/2026/02/crea...
jaquent.github.io
Creating actually publication-ready figures for journals using `ggplot2`
A practical guide to creating publication-ready figures in R using ggplot2, covering journal dimension requirements, custom themes, updated geom defaults, and SVG export—with minimal manual adjustment...
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Klaus Pforr @klauspforr.eurosky.social · 24/02/2026
interesting paper on effect of paternity leave reform on gender beliefs and norms. #WinningHeartsAndMinds www.nber.org/papers/w34862
nber.org
Expanding Paternity Leave: Effects on Beliefs, Norms, and Gender Gaps
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...
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Adam Scharpf @ascharpf.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
Russia, Venezuela, Iran, China, the Sahel region, the United States ... Want to know why state agents carry out brutal repression — or participate in illegal coups? Our new book "Making a Career in Dictatorship" provides answers — it just got published by @academic.oup.com: tinyurl.com/ystwm3tf
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