Finally, we found that, despite low levels of trust (previous figures and lefthand figure here) and mixed responses about genAI's potential net positive effect (righthand figure here), there is still faith that genAI will continue to improve (middle figure here)

However, respondents were generally worried about genAI and the spread of misinformation, control by large tech companies, and costs related to the environment. They were less concerned about economic and computational costs, however.

Among scholars using genAI at least weekly, there is some agreement that genAI can save time and is already incorporated into tools they typically use. People are also just curious! They also felt less outside forces, reporting low levels of pressure from the field/dept/collaborators to use genAI

First, we find that a little over 1/3 of respondents report using generative AI at least once a week, a number in line with analogous studies from other disciplines. There weren't clear differences between computational and non-computational scholars, either (ended up being a recurring theme).

We sampled authors of papers that appeared in 50 sociology journals over the past five years, so it might be more accurate to say our study examines generative AI and sociology rather than just "sociologists."

We also pay special attention to scholars using computational methods in their research

I'll be presenting work at the Pacific Sociological Association Conference in San Francisco next Friday in a session titled "New Digital Methods", slide through! (work done with
anthony lising antonio, Leslie Luqueño, and Francis A. Pearman; preprint here: osf.io/preprints/so...) #PSA2025

For example, when splitting our data by students who are first-gen or not, we see that the curves are both fairly normal but that first-gen students use more verbs in their writing. AI text is closer to the non-first gen students but with much less variability

GOOD LUCK MATTHEW

My first post is a picture I took of my dog, Samson, while living in Monterey during the tail end of my PhD. Good times!