Please join the Statistical Computing Workshop as they host Ali Sanaei, Associate Instructional Professor of Computational Social Science at the University of Chicago, for a presentation titled, "Simulating Realistic Focus Group Discussions Using Large Language Models"
Abstract
We introduce the FocusGroup package in R for simulating moderated focus groups with large language models. The package allows constructing participants with rich personas from survey data, contains several speaker-selection rules, and experimentation facilities. The package can be used for two primary purposes: to pilot actual focus-groups, and to study LLM behavior. We present five experiments. First, we compare results from simulations based on minimal personas and personas enriched using ANES 2024 data and show that enriched personas yield more varied language, more interpersonal friction, and more personal grounding. Other experiments are concerned with LLM behavior regarding moral dilemmas and have the benefit of having agents interact experimentally, as opposed to the typical manipulations of one-off prompts.
Bio
Ali Sanaei is Associate Instructional Professor of Computational Social Science at the University of Chicago. His research is on quantitative and computational methods of social science research. He received his PhD in political science from the University of Michigan in 2015 and taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, Iran, before joining the University of Chicago in 2023.