Research Methods on Kailas Venkitasubramanian

Some Thoughts on AI-Augmented Community Research at the Charlotte Urban Institute

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I thought of compiling a few thoughts on using AI at the institute or broadly in organizations similar to ours. I’ve been using AI tools in my research for over a year and I still can’t decide if I’m more excited or more unsettled but I feel it’s more of the former these days. But this ambivalence feels like the right starting point for a conversation about where we, as an institute built on community trust and research, actually want to go with this. When I say AI, I mean the generative AI kind.

Bayesian Improved Surname Geocoding: How It Works and Where We Use It

Sun, 15 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

If you work with administrative data long enough, you run into the same wall eventually: the dataset has everything you need except race and ethnicity. Hospital discharge records, voter files, tax records, benefits enrollment data — these are often rich with information about where people live, what services they use, and what outcomes they experience. But ask whether they capture race or ethnicity, and the answer is usually no, or inconsistently, or only in ways that aren’t usable.