I checked 7 public opinion journals on Sunday, October 18, 2026 using the Crossref API. For the period October 11 to October 17, I found 13 new paper(s) in 5 journal(s).

Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties

The decline and comeback of center-right parties in Turkey? A comparative perspective
Kursat Cinar
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Journal of Official Statistics

Book Review: Deep Learning: Foundations and Concepts BishopChristopher M.BishopHugh, Deep Learning: Foundations and Concepts, Springer: New York, NY, 2024; 649 pp.: ISBN: 978-3-031-45467-7
Mehdi Dagdoug
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Governing Large Language Model Services for Confidential Microdata: A Decision Framework for National Statistical Offices
Hanan Ather, Mohammed Haddou, Saeid Molladavoudi
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National statistical offices increasingly face requests to provide large language model (LLM) capabilities in secure research environments. The governance problem is to determine which service configurations, if any, can be supported safely on confidential microdata. These services challenge traditional statistical disclosure control because interaction is adaptive, systems may retrieve documents or call analytical tools, and outputs may appear plausible without being grounded in approved data. This paper proposes a governance framework that organizes each request as a sequence of decisions: whether an LLM is needed, which service mode is justified, which threat model applies, which controls are required, and what evidence must be reviewed before release. The framework spans deterministic pipelines, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), tool-using agents, code-execution agents, linkage configurations, and fine-tuning.
A Framework for Using Metadata to Combine Data Sets in Official Statistics
Yvonne A. P. M. Gootzen, Arnout van Delden, Piet J. H. Daas
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There are increasing numbers of sources available for the production of official statistics. When one is interested in making new output or redesigning the input that is used for existing output, it might not always be clear if and how the intended output can be produced from the variety of input data sets available. The current paper proposes a metadata-based framework with a search algorithm that finds out if a processing path is possible from input data sets to intended output. The framework uses the conceptual metadata of the data set as input, that is, the unit types, the identifier variables, the measurement variables and the reference periods. Our contribution to existing literature is threefold. We provide a set of basic operators, each representing a small, clearly defined step in the process of combining data sets; we can accommodate tailor-made operators (models) to cover a wide range of data configurations, and we provide an implementation in Python code to automatically answer if and how the intended output can be produced from a set of available input data sets. The framework is evaluated on a case study. We provide publicly available code and different examples on Git to facilitate the use and further development of our framework.

Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology

Survey Behavior and Cognition Across the Life Course: Evidence from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics
Malak B Kalasho, Esther M Friedman, Thomas F Crossley
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Cognitive abilities across adulthood are important pre-cursors to dementia. The primary way to capture cognitive abilities is via expensive and time-consuming standardized cognitive tests. We explore the extent to which cognition can be inferred from indicators of survey response behavior (SRB), say, the time to complete a questionnaire and the incidence of contradictory responses. We use nationally representative data from a mixed-mode supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics collected in 2016. This Wellbeing and Daily Life supplement includes rich cognitive data capturing both verbal and quantitative reasoning, and paradata from the supplement (e.g., time to complete). We assess the ability of survey response behavior to improve prediction of cognitive ability after accounting for standard sociodemographic variables typically available in surveys. We explore this from age 30 and across the life course. We find that SRB measures provide modest but consistent explanatory power across a wide range of ages. The explanatory power of SRB measures in our data is less than that of education, except at the oldest ages. SRB measures contain useful additional information, but models that include basic demographics, education and SRB measures leave much of the variation in cognitive ability unexplained. Which SRB measures best predict cognitive ability is consistent across cognitive measure but differs by age. Errors (i.e., contradictory responses) and response times are the best predictors at working ages but skips and backups are more predictive at older ages.

Politics, Groups, and Identities

From coverage to context: how race, sanctuary policies, and media shape immigrant perceptions of police
Diego Esparza, Andrea Silva
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Evolution by national election? Partisanship, voting behavior, and sentiments toward culture war groups
John V. Kane, Srivardhan Jangili, Joseph Sandor, VitĂłria Sgorlon
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Racial gap in attitudes on support for military actions
Chan-Song Kim
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Pressures of place: urban–rural variation in considerations for political participation
Caroline High Pippert, Jennifer Lin, Kristin Lunz Trujillo
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Silence and resistance: representations of Black men and masculinities in the UK House of Commons 1979–2019
Shardia Briscoe-Palmer, Orly Siow
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Social Science Computer Review

When Heritage Goes Playable: Digital Spectacle and Cultural Attention Externalities in Platform Markets
Zhuolin Li, Jin Zhang
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Digital platforms reallocate scarce consumer attention, yet the externalities generated within these ecosystems and their heterogeneous reception across culturally distinct audiences remain poorly understood. Against this backdrop, this study investigates whether major digital spectacles can trigger cultural attention spillovers, exploiting the release of Black Myth : Wukong as a quasi-natural experiment. Utilizing rich bilingual user reviews from the Steam platform, we deploy a supervised machine learning pipeline to construct a quantifiable metric of cultural utility attribution. Employing a difference-in-differences (DD) design coupled with coarsened exact matching (CEM) to address selection bias, we find that this profound cultural shock structurally recalibrates consumer attention. Robust to pre-trend validations and traffic controls, the incidence rate of culturally oriented reviews for incumbent games sharing Chinese cultural elements increased by approximately 11.9%. Crucially, these spillovers are highly directional and bounded. Pre-existing associative memory acts as a binding constraint for translating the technological shock into sustained cultural attention. Transforming heritage into interactive digital experiences offers an effective approach to activate dormant cultural assets. From a practical perspective, flagship digital spectacles can generate positive attention externalities that systematically reduce attention frictions for related digital goods.
Academic Passporting in Western Versus Non-Western Feminist Scholarship (1936–2024): Bibliometric and Thematic Landscapes
Muhammad Awais
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This study examines structural inequalities in feminist knowledge production by analyzing 11,060 Scopus indexed articles published between 1936 and 2024. Using bibliometric indicators, statistical citation analysis, and topic modeling, the study found that Western affiliated scholars dominate both output and recognition, whereas non-Western voices remain numerically and symbolically marginalized. The findings highlight how “Westernization” operates not only through citation advantage but also through thematic centrality: scholarship from Western institutions often sets the agenda in areas such as digital activism and intersectionality, while non-Western contributions, often centered on decolonial critique, grassroots mobilization, and local contexts, receive less global visibility. Mixed teams improve recognition among non-Western scholars but do not close the structural gap, suggesting that collaboration narrows inequalities without redistributing epistemic authority. To explain these dynamics, this study introduces the concept of academic passporting , whereby Western institutional affiliations function as strong passports that confer recognition and visibility, whereas non-Western affiliations operate as weak passports, unless stamped through Western collaboration. These findings have implications for diversifying scholarly practices, rethinking theoretical frameworks, and shaping equitable research policies.
Role-Playing as Immigrants for Learning to Trust: Constructing a Theory of Experiential Contact
Brandon C. Bouchillon
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This research examined whether a computer-based role-playing game in which participants created immigrant characters from Mexico and took them through the process of naturalizing to the United States could be used to promote trust. A posttest-only experiment with a control group was conducted in Fall 2024 ( N = 98). Results indicate that participants who played the game had significantly higher levels of trust in immigrants in general, as well as those from Mexico, Central/South America, India, China, and the Middle East specifically, compared to the control condition. Parasocial connections to characters in game-based settings strengthened the effect of role-playing on trusting immigrants from Mexico. Half of the role-playing participants also saw a thank-you video from an outgroup representative, as a form of mediated indirect contact. The video condition appeared to drive the interaction between role-playing and sensing parasocial connections to characters in predicting Mexican immigrant trust. Results demonstrate the potential for role-playing games to foster trust between groups who may struggle to interact in person, along with the additive effect of mediated indirect contact at high levels of parasocial connection.