April Heyward gave an invited talk titled "AI in the Social Sciences" for the Hawaii Data Science Institute on how she employs Artificial Intelligence in her research.

1. AI in the Social Sciences
April Heyward, MRA
Hawaii Data Science Institute Data Science Fridays
Seminar
Friday, October 1, 2021

2. My Research Interests and Current
Projects

3. Dr. Herbert Simon
• Huge influence on my research.
• One of the pioneer scholars to contribute to Artificial
Intelligence.
• Continues to be revered in the Public Administration,
Psychology, Economics, and Computer Science
disciplines.
• Simon put forward in his book, The Sciences of the
Artificial, the characterization of AI as systems
developed by humans to achieve goals and to function.
• Artificial intelligence emerged out of the computer
science discipline .
• The discipline can be segmented into subdisciplines to
include machine learning (e.g., supervised learning,
unsupervised learning, semi-supervised learning),
artificial neural networks, and deep learning, etc.

4. My Research Interests
Computational
Social Science
Data Science
Decision
Science
E-Government
Machine
Learning
Public
Administration
Public Policy
Research
Methods
Social Media
Research

5. My Current Research Projects
Quantitative Research – “A Data Science and Machine Learning Approach to
Comparative COVID-19 Policy Responses”
• Study Aim – Investigate health and economic policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic
in developed countries and developing countries.
• Prior research indicated more rigorous research is needed for contribution to the body of
knowledge from a public policy perspective.
• Research Aim – Answer how does data science and machine learning inform public policy
about the COVID-19 pandemic and what is the state of the COVID-19 pandemic in
developed countries and developing countries.

6. My Current Research Projects
Quantitative Research – “Measuring the Effectiveness of E-Government
Delivery Models from a Public Administration Perspective”
• Study Aim – Investigate the effectiveness of E-Government in Developed Countries and
Developing Countries.
• Two-phased study.
• Prior research indicated more rigorous research is needed for contribution to the body of
knowledge from a public administration perspective as literature is dominated by the
information systems discipline.
• Research Aim – Answer what is the state of e-government delivery models globally.

7. My Current Research Projects
Quantitative Research – “A Public Administration Research Approach
and Empirical Perspective of COVID-19”
• Study Aim – Investigate public administration approaches to COVID-19.
• Prior research indicated more rigorous research is needed for contribution to the
body of knowledge from a public administration perspective as literature was
initially dominated by epidemiology and other sub-disciplines of public health.
• Research Aim – Employ data science and machine learning algorithms in a public
research administration approach and perspective of COVID-19.

8. My Current Research Projects
Quantitative Research – “Integration, Challenges, and Future
Direction of Data Science in Public Administration”
• Study Aim – Investigate the application of data science in public administration.
• Prior research revealed limited rigorous research on data science in public
administration.
• Research Aim – Answer what is the state of data science in public
administration.

9. RStudio:
My Happy Place

12. How do I use RStudio?
Not an Exhaustive List
• Data Science
• Data Wrangling/Cleaning
• Data Analysis
• Data Visualizations
• Statistics (Descriptive and Inferential)
• Machine Learning
• Text Mining
• Natural Language Processing
• Sentiment (Emotions) Analysis
• Twitter Data Pulls via my Twitter Developer Credentials
• Decision Trees

13. Twitter:
A Data Scientist’s Treasure Trove

18. October 1, 2021 Note: FDA
will not extend the shelf life
of JandJ Vaccine but will
extend shelf life of Moderna
Vaccine. Will pull JandJ and
Moderna vaccine related
tweets.

21. Newest Research Project –
Climate Change

22. Twitter Search Criteria Total Tweet Results
Twitter Search Criteria Total Number of Tweets To Date
#StimulusChecks 19,644
Stimulus Checks 49,263
#AmericanRescuePlan 23,837
American Rescue Plan 50,192
#BoosterShots 1,638
Booster Shots 17,469
#Coronavirus 17,916
Coronavirus 17,975
#COVID-19 143,900
#COVID19 143,756
COVID19 Vaccine 176,666
COVID-19 Vaccine 107,910

23. Twitter Search Criteria Total Tweet Results
Twitter Search Criteria Total Number of Tweets To Date
#DeltaVariant 143,412
Delta Variant 161,812
#GammaVariant 305
Gamma Variant 5,847
JandJ Vaccine 2,296
#JandJVaccine 195
#JohnsonandJohnsonVaccine 9,359
Johnson and Johnson Vaccine 68,671
#ModernaBooster 6
Moderna Booster 6,841
#Moderna Vaccine 9,441
Moderna Vaccine 124,590

24. Twitter Search Criteria Total Tweet Results
Twitter Search Criteria Total Number of Tweets To Date
#PfizerBooster 88
Pfizer Booster 17,882
#Pfizer Vaccine 19,511
Pfizer Vaccine 124,116
Paycheck Protection Program 1,195
Paycheck Protection Program
Loan
263
PPP Loans 2,043
#PPPLoans 137
#SocialDistancing 36,152
Social Distancing 125,318
#VaccineBooster 45
Vaccine Booster 17,615

25. Twitter Search Criteria Total Tweet Results
Twitter Search Criteria Total Number of Tweets To Date
#WearAMask 102,358
Wear A Mask 124,977
#ClimateChange 35,684
Climate Change 35,943
#ExtremeWeather 1,384
Extreme Weather 9,401

26. Twitter Search Criteria Notes
• Twitter searches without hashtags pulls more tweets.
• The “COVID19 Vaccine” twitter search has yielded the most tweets to
date.
• There are more “Delta Variant” tweets than “Gamma Variant” tweets.
• The “Moderna Vaccine” Twitter search has yielded the most tweets as
compared to the “Pfizer Vaccine” tweets (second place) and “Johnson
and Johnson Vaccine” tweets (third place) to date.
• The “Pfizer Booster” Twitter search has yielded more tweets as
compared to the “Moderna Booster” Twitter search.

27. Sentiment (Emotions) Analysis of Tweets

28. Twitter Data Pull Process
• Access Twitter Developer Account via RStudio.
• Need app name, consumer key, consumer secret, access token, and access secret
• Note: Twitter Developer Accounts must be approved by Twitter
• Note: Submit Twitter Developer application describing the purpose and planned
usage of Twitter.
• Load “rtweet” R package in RStudio.
• Program (code) RStudio to search and pull tweets
• Twitter Search Criteria
• Number of Tweets to pull
• Should retweets be included
• Save Twitter Results as a .CSV file

31. American Rescue Plan Act
 American Rescue Plan Act is a combination of Health, Economic,
Education, and Social Welfare policy interventions.
Some of the features of the American Rescue Plan include:
COVID-19 vaccinations
Economic relief to small businesses, state and local governments, and individuals
Unemployment benefits
Housing assistance
Agriculture and Nutrition Programs
Stimulus Payments up to $1,400.00 to individuals – one of the most popular feature

32. American Rescue Plan Act Timeline
 Proposed on January 14, 2021
 U.S. House of Representatives started working on the budget resolution
on February 2, 2021
 Introduced in the U.S. House on February 24, 2021
 Passed the U.S. House on February 27, 2021
 Passed the U.S. Senate on March 6, 2021
 U.S. House Agreed to the U.S. Senate Amendment on March 10, 2021
 Signed into law by President Joseph Biden on March 11, 2021
 IRS started processing direct payments on March 12, 2021

33. R Programming and Sentiment (Emotions) Analysis by April Heyward

34. R Programming and Sentiment (Emotions) Analysis by April Heyward

35. R Programming and Sentiment (Emotions) Analysis by April Heyward

36. American Rescue Plan Sentiment (Emotions) Analysis Notes
 Anticipation and Positive emotions were the top emotions in the analyses
as responses to this intervention
Trust, surprise, joy, negative, fear, sadness, disgust, and anger emotions
were the highest when the U.S. House agreed with the amended bill and
later sent forward for signature to put into law.

38. R Programming and Sentiment (Emotions) Analysis by April Heyward

40. R Programming and Sentiment (Emotions) Analysis by April Heyward

42. R Programming and Sentiment (Emotions) Analysis by April Heyward

44. R Programming and Sentiment (Emotions) Analysis by April Heyward

45. Delta Variant Sentiment (Emotions) Analysis Notes
 Positive emotion has increased from 6/16/2021 (14,873) to 9/24/2021
(18,335).
 Negative emotion has decreased from 6/16/2021 (13,541) to 9/24/2021
(12,775).
 Trust emotion has increased from 6/16/2021 (9,252) to 9/24/2021
(10,118).
 Fear emotion has decreased from 6/16/2021 (8,921) to 9/24/2021
(8,535).
 Sadness emotion has increased from 6/16/2021 (6,058) to 9/24/2021
(7,860).
 Anger emotion has increased from 6/16/2021 (4,239) to 9/24/2021

46. Next Steps and Future Direction

47. Next Steps
 Continue text mining varying Twitter search results to add context to
Sentiment (emotions) analysis.
For instance, the results of the Delta Variant sentiment (emotions) analyses showed
positive emotion as the top emotion. It would be interesting to know what is
contributing to this emotion.
 Working on employing Random Forests to make predictions.
 Following Climate Change research and will continue to integrate Data
Science and Machine Learning.

48. Contact
Information
April Heyward, MRA
E: april.heyward@outlook.com
Twitter: @heyward_april
LinkedIn: April Heyward, MRA