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Measurement in the Age of LLMs: An Application to Ideological Scaling

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arxiv 2312.09203 v2 pith:25YAJKQG submitted 2023-12-14 cs.CL

Measurement in the Age of LLMs: An Application to Ideological Scaling

classification cs.CL
keywords llmsapproachelicitideologicalideologylanguagemeasurementscores
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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Much of social science is centered around terms like ``ideology'' or ``power'', which generally elude precise definition, and whose contextual meanings are trapped in surrounding language. This paper explores the use of large language models (LLMs) to flexibly navigate the conceptual clutter inherent to social scientific measurement tasks. We rely on LLMs' remarkable linguistic fluency to elicit ideological scales of both legislators and text, which accord closely to established methods and our own judgement. A key aspect of our approach is that we elicit such scores directly, instructing the LLM to furnish numeric scores itself. This approach affords a great deal of flexibility, which we showcase through a variety of different case studies. Our results suggest that LLMs can be used to characterize highly subtle and diffuse manifestations of political ideology in text.

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Cited by 3 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Talking Politics with Artificial Intelligence

    econ.GN 2026-07 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Large-scale analysis of AI conversations indicates they function primarily as practical intermediaries for political tasks rather than arenas for public expression, with increased expressiveness after major events.

  2. Validating LLMs in social science: Epistemic threats and emerging norms

    cs.CY 2026-07 accept novelty 6.0

    In 50 LLM measurement tasks from 27 top-journal papers, LLM outputs are often central to claims yet validation is limited, mostly convergent, and frequently incomplete.

  3. Talking Politics with Artificial Intelligence

    econ.GN 2026-07 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Political content appears in 3.9% of AI conversations, mostly for information and drafting rather than opinions, with U.S. users showing increased stance-taking and affect after the 2024 election result call.