January 10, 2022
Stigma relating to substance use can have a range of negative consequences for those affected. Though there is increasing awareness of stigma relating to mental and substance use disorders, there is more that we can do.
There is a 20 hr. per week graduate student RA position for Winter Quarter 2022 that is focused on using natural language processing methods to better understand stigma-related experiences as related in social media data. This position will involve two primary sets of activities:
1) Using natural language processing methods to identify instances of stigma relating to substance use in social media data. You will have access to existing training data that has been annotated in terms of constructs informed by stigma theory.
2) Develop new methods to add training data.
The data that we are working with is challenging for a number of reasons, including having unbalanced data, challenging constructs (variables) that human annotators do not often agree on, and the emotional valence and sensitivity of the subject matter of the data. We seek a researcher with a strong background in natural language processing, machine learning, or other related methods, and is also interested in applying these in an interpretive context.
An appreciation/experience with qualitative data analysis methods can be helpful due to the nature of the data.
The overarching goal of this work is to better understand the diverse experiences of stigma relating to substance use to inform the develop of stigma reduction interventions.
If you are interested in this position, please send a resume/CV and letter of interest to Dr. Annie Chen (atchen@uw.edu).