Stephen Vaisey, Professor of Sociology

Contact Info:

Teaching (Spring 2026):

• SOCIOL 722.001, SOCIAL STATISTICS I Synopsis

  Erwin 753, Tu 10:15 AM-12:35 PM

• SOCIOL 722.01L, SOCIAL STATISTICS I Synopsis

  Erwin 753, Th 10:15 AM-12:35 PM

Education:

Ph.D., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2008

Research Interests:

The main goal of my current research is to understand the varieties, origins, and consequences of different moral worldviews. I want to know where people get their ideas about what a "good life" looks like and what it means to be a "good person" and how these (usually implicit) ideas help shape their strategies of action over time. In recent months, I have also been writing about the promise and pitfalls of panel data for causal inference.

Areas of Interest:

Culture and Cognition,
Action Theory,
Quantitative Methods

Curriculum Vitae

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

1. Combs, A; Varela, G; Robinson, DT; Smith-Lovin, L; Vaisey, S, Deviations from cultural consensus about occupations: The duality of occupation meanings and Americans’ meaning communities, Social Networks, vol. 82 (July, 2025), pp. 153-165 [doi]  [abs].
2. Keskintürk, T; Bello, P; Vaisey, S, The promises and pitfalls of using panel data to understand individual belief change, Political Psychology (January, 2025) [doi]  [abs].
3. Keskintürk, T; Kiley, K; Vaisey, S, What Are You Talking about? Discussion Frequency of Issues Captured in Common Survey Questions, Sociological Science, vol. 12 (January, 2025), pp. 256-276 [doi]  [abs].
4. Restrepo Ochoa, N; Vaisey, S, Opinions on hard-to-discuss topics change more via cohort replacement., Evolutionary human sciences, vol. 6 (January, 2024), pp. e25 [doi]  [abs].
5. Edelmann, A; Vaisey, S, Gender differential effect of college on political orientation over the last 40 years in the U.S.-A propensity score weighting approach., PloS one, vol. 18 no. 1 (January, 2023), pp. e0279273 [doi]  [abs].