Computational social scientists: a draft directory and basic survey results

Last week, some of us* at Michigan's Center for Complex Systems circulated a survey of computational social scientists -- trying to find out who self-identifies as a compSocSci person and what they study, so that they can be in touch with each other.

We had just under 100 responses, from people at many different institutions, working in a wide variety of areas. Here are some early results.

First, the obligatory word cloud. This isn't particularly scientific, but it illustrates the concepts that people find important in this space. Not surprisingly, we had a strong showing from network people and agent-based modelers.




We also asked about broad areas where people had formal training and were currently working. The two are pretty similar, so I'll just show the graph on training.


More results, and a revised version of the directory will be forthcoming in a couple weeks. Please let us know if you have any questions. We hope these will be useful resources for the community.

Click here to take the survey. We'll keep it open for another couple weeks, so that responses can continue to trickle in.

Click here for the directory in pdf format. (To avoid spam, this doesn't include email addresses. Email me if you want a copy that includes emails.)

* Scott Page, Dan Katz, and I