Dr. Leah von der Heyde, computational social scientist and survey methodologist at GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, has been granted this year’s Lorenz von Stein Award for her thesis titled "Who Counts? Survey Data Quality in the Age of AI". The Lorenz von Stein Foundation annually awards the prize for the best dissertation from the School of Social Sciences at the University of Mannheim. The prize money is 1,000 euros.
In her dissertation, Leah von der Heyde investigates whether and under which conditions Large Language Models (LLMs) can be leveraged in survey research by providing empirical evidence of the potentials and limits of their applications in European contexts. The dissertation finds that, without customization, LLMs appear infeasible for the prediction and classification of public opinion not just in terms of accuracy, but also in terms of efficiency.
Leah von der Heyde was presented with the award at the Graduation Ceremonies of the School of Social Sciences on Friday, 26 June 2026.
Before receiving her PhD in Social Data Science and Research Methodology from the University of Mannheim, Leah von der Heyde studied political science at LMU Munich, the University of Mannheim, and Georgetown University. She was part of the Social Data Science and AI Lab at LMU Munich, worked for the European Social Survey at GESIS, the European Parliamentary Research Service, and several market and public opinion research institutes in Germany and Sweden. At GESIS, Leah von der Heyde is now part of KODAQS, the Competence Center for Data Quality in the Social Sciences, where she continues her research on improving public opinion predictions with LLMs.
Leah von der Heyde’s dissertation was supervised by Dr. Alexander Wenz and Prof. Frauke Kreuter and reviewed by Prof. Florian Keusch and Prof. Frauke Kreuter.