Bas Hofstra

Big thanks!

Thrilled that we were awarded a LISS panel grant, with @rensec.bsky.social & Beate Völker!

With the grant we realize survey time in the LISS panel to measure change in extended networks that include both strong and weak ties. We apply a new instrument: the network scale-up method in the panel

Due to the high number of extraordinary proposals for the 2025 LISS panel Grant, ODISSEI and Centerdata have decided to award additional projects 🌟

The grantees will explore themes surrounding domestic gender imbalances, political polarization, and more. Read more here: edu.nl/nv8x4

Microdata Access Grant 2026-1 applications are now open. Researchers at ODISSEI member organisations are eligible to apply.

Application deadline: March 26, 15:00 CET ⏱

Have questions before you apply? Join our Q&A with @cbsstatistiek.bsky.social
📆 March 3, 14:00–15:00 CET → edu.nl/wdfc8

Today at 12:00, join us for an Online Introduction to High-Resolution Geospatial LISS Data in SANE 🧑‍💻

🔗 zoom.us/j/93104040907

A new publication at www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

We find that religious markers (esp. beards) can reduce perceived trustworthiness in Turkey.

(That's why you often see me clean shaven ;-)

And here is the replication website: leaving-settling.netlify.app

It combines longitudinal register data on salaries and, uniquely, matches that to survey data on PhD holders to follow their careers. This enables to precisely pinpoint how gender inequities in salaries develop after a PhD both within and outside the university.

Check out our new, open access paper in RSSM. Anne Maaike Mulders expertly led our author team (with Christoph Janietz Jochem Tolsma myself) to find an important piece of the gender inequity puzzle in academia.

🔬Paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

📰Press release: www.ru.nl/onderzoek/on...

📣 Our introduction to structural causal models in science studies is now published:
doi.org/10.1162/QSS....

@tklebel.bsky.social and I tried to make our introduction as accessible as possible. We illustrate the theory by three case studies based on a simulated model of Open Science. 🧵(1/6)

Soc. Networks: The impact of dyads and extended networks on political talk: A factorial survey experiment in the Netherlands
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378873325000802

This was a very cool paper to write and combines complicated Bayesian NSUM models and vignette experiments with a very important sociological topic – i.e., discussing politics is a vehicle to de-polarize society.

Here is the open replication website to the paper: politicaltalk.netlify.app

-Homophily on gender, ethnic background, or political opinion similarity surprisingly has little effects
- Whether you know someone well, and friends much more so than family, seems more important than whether you look alike

🧐 What do we find?
- The overwhelming majority of people in the Netherlands (>70%) disclose political opinions or engage in substantive debate
- Men do so more often than women, as do theoretically educated rather than practically educated people

🔭What do we study?
- We ran an experiment with thousands of people in the Netherlands as to how they choose political discussion partners
- We consider dyadic similarity and extended networks using network scale-up methodology

The impact of dyads and extended networks on political talk: A factorial survey experiment in the Netherlands Open political dialogue is regarded as foundational to democratic health and our social fabric. Here, we study political dialogue by examining with wh…

Whether or not to be afraid of awkward discussions about politics during family diners over the holiday? 🎄

Find out in our paper here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Excited to share our open access study just published in Social Networks by myself, Thijmen Jeroense, and Jochem Tolsma!

Big congrats, sounds super interesting!

This is an important paper for institutes that want to engage more with non-academic audiences. @eui-eu.bsky.social

Professors in the media: dynamics of cumulative advantage, reputation, and gender Abstract. Translation of science to a general public is increasingly important in modern academia. Yet, there is little knowledge on whether and why scient

📢 New #OpenAccess!

Why do some professors appear in the media far more than others?
#RH_Heiberger @BasHofstra #S_Unger find both patterns of cumulative advantage & gender inequality, with men more likely to become “short-listed”!

➡️ Read it ungated at: doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcaf037

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Saïd explains the paper very well in the thread!

This paper integrates multiple important dimensions: interdisciplinary team, replication materials (lnkd.in/eWm6D94P), linking together cool digital trace data, all to answer an important sociological question.

Thrilled to share our latest open access paper published in European Sociological Review by @mshu.bsky.social, Raphael Heiberger, and myself!

You can find it here: academic.oup.com/esr/advance-...

Professors in the media: dynamics of cumulative advantage, reputation, and gender Abstract. Translation of science to a general public is increasingly important in modern academia. Yet, there is little knowledge on whether and why scient

What gets professors into the media?
📢 New open access publication in @europeansocreview.bsky.social together with Raphael Heiberger from @s7css.bsky.social and @bashofstra.bsky.social!
👉 doi.org/10.1093/esr/...

NYU Abu Dhabi is recruiting a 3-year Postdoctoral Associate for a Computational Social Science project on the coevolution of ingroup bias and group boundaries.
For more details and to apply, please visit: apply.interfolio.com/173544.

Knowledge lost, parity gained? COVID-19 and gender gaps in Dutch academia - Scientometrics We investigated the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic impacted long-standing gender inequalities in Dutch academia. Dutch academia is an ideal case to gain insight on exacerbated gender differentials due to COVID-19 on employees, because men and women face comparable institutional contexts and any COVID-19 impact becomes visible and measurable fast through potentially decreased yearly publications. We reconstructed the complete publishing careers up till 2022 of more than 8000 Dutch scientists who received a PhD from 1990 onwards and still had an active publication career before the pandemic started. We compared the publication dip between men and women during COVID-19. Our data allowed us to investigate whether the gendered impact of COVID-19 varied across research domains, different PhD cohorts and type of research output. We consistently find that COVID-19 did not have more severe consequences on research output for women than for men.

COVID has reduced the number of papers published by NL-based scholars, but it has not increased the gender gap. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

This is a key paper in the growing literature on the effects of COVID-19 on academia. It is done purely with webscraped data, and it is a showcase how you can do fine-grained analyses if you put in the work.

But:
- Barriers to productivity remain persistent for women scientists
- Yet, the productivity gender gap did not widen during COVID

📖 What did we find?
- During COVID-19, scientists published about 33% fewer papers
- Dutch science was hit hard: “lost” around 20,000 publications
- Scientists with childcare responsibilities struggled to maintain productivity
- Researchers with a migration background were also hit harder

🔭 We analyzed publication data from more than 8,000 scientists across all disciplines at all Dutch universities, covering the period from 1990 to 2022.

🧐 We asked whether women in Dutch science show a stronger productivity decline than men during COVID-19