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About
Arash Attarian is a PhD student in Computational Social Science, supervised by Patrick Sturgis and Thomas Robinson, and funded by an LSE PhD Studentship.
Prior to his PhD, Ash spent several years in the survey research industry (2019-2026), progressing from a Data Scientist to a Senior Manager of Data Science and Advanced Analytics. As AI-generated fraud advanced, he experienced firsthand how multi-million dollar strategic decisions were being made on fundamentally compromised data.
He now studies how synthetic data, from responses fabricated for fraud to respondents simulated by researchers, distorts the analytical techniques used to interpret surveys. His current project focuses on attitudinal segmentation, assessing the degree of contamination a survey can absorb before its segments diverge from the counterfactual, and how the resulting distortions differ by source. He is particularly interested in whether such errors fall hardest on hard-to-reach populations.
Ash holds an MA in Economics from the University of Toronto and a BS in Economics from the University of Louisville, where he also completed advanced coursework in mathematics.
Research interests:
Survey methodology, Synthetic data, Data quality