Description:

Please join the American Politics Workshop as they host Assistant Professor Molly Offer-Westort, University of Chicago. Session title and abstract forthcoming. 

Molly Offer-Westort's work on statistical methodology for social science research integrates machine learning methods with experimental design to answer causal questions. She also has an ongoing substantive research program that examines online behavior to understand how people change their views and attitudes in response to the conversations they take part in and the information they engage with online. She combines these agendas in social media experiments, using approaches like adaptive assignment and policy learning, and incorporating natural language processing methods for flexible conversational interventions.

She has conducted social media experiments to identify the most effective interventions for curbing the spread of misinformation online, to optimally target informational messaging to people hesitant to adopt vaccines, and to measure the efficacy of online deep canvassing. Her work in statistical methodology develops and advances tools for experimental design and analysis, with a particular focus on adaptive experimentation.

Offer-Westort's PhD is joint in Political Science and Statistics & Data Science, conferred by Yale University in 2019; Offer-Westort also holds a Masters in Statistics, also from Yale, and a Masters in Public Affairs, from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.