The Computational Ethnography Lab (CEL)

Writing

Books

• Abramson, Corey M. 2015. The End Game: How Inequality Shapes Our Final Years. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Paperback ed. 2017. Winner, 2016 Outstanding Publication Award, American Sociological Association Section on Aging and the Life Course. Featured in The New York Times and The Atlantic. ISBN: 9780674979680 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674979680 New York Times
• Abramson, Corey M. and Neil Gong. 2020. Beyond the Case: The Logics and Practices of Comparative Ethnography. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Included in Top 2020 Oxford University Press Sociology Titles. ISBN: 9780190608491 https://global.oup.com/academic/product/beyond-the-case-9780190608491?q=abramson%20gong&lang=en&cc=us

Articles

Health and Inequality

• Abramson, Corey M. (lead author), Kieran L. Turner, Ignacia Arteaga, Alma Hernández de Jesús, Brandi Ginn, Yuhan Nian, and Daniel Dohan. 2026. “Pragmatic Sensemaking: Mapping the Cultural Work of People Living with Dementia and Their Care-Partners.” Social Science & Medicine 409:119829. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2026.119829
• Li, Zhuofan, Daniel Dohan, and Corey M. Abramson (senior author). 2026. “Temporal Misalignment and Unequal Agency: What Terminal Cancer Patients Teach Us about Time and Inequality.” American Sociological Review 91(4):545-571. ASA featured article, Fall 2026. https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224261448220 Podcast ASA Press Release
• Arteaga, I., Hernández de Jesús, A., Ginn, B., Abramson, C., and Dohan, D. 2025. “Understanding how social context shapes decisions to seek institutional care: A qualitative study of experiences of progressive cognitive decline among Latinx families.” The Gerontologist 65(11):gnaf207. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnaf207
• Abramson, Corey M. (lead author), Zhuofan Li, Tara Prendergast, and Martín Sánchez-Jankowski. 2024. “Inequality in the Origins and Experiences of Pain: What "Big (Qualitative) Data" Reveal About Social Suffering in the United States.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 10(5):34-65. Special Issue: Building an Open Qualitative Science (Editors: Edin, Fields, Grusky, Leskovec, Mattingly, Olson, Varner). September. https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2024.10.5.02
• Abramson, Tiffany M., Abramson, Corey M., Burner, Elizabeth, Eckstein, Marc, Sanko, Stephen, Wenzel, Suzanne. 2023. “Does Housing Status Matter in Emergency Medical Services Administration of Naloxone?: A Prehospital Cross-sectional Study.” WESTJEM (The Western Journal of Emergency Medicine) 24(5):831-838. Featured Article for American Academy of Emergency Medicine (Insights). https://doi.org/10.5811/westjem.60237 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4b83v6mc
• Garrett, Sarah, Thea Matthews, Corey M. Abramson, Christopher Koenig, Laura Trupin, Christopher Daugherty, Fay Hlubocky, Pamela Munster, Ann Reinert, and Daniel Dohan. 2020. “Before Consent: Qualitative Analysis of Deliberations of Patients With Advanced Cancer About Early-Phase Clinical Trials.” JCO Oncology Practice 16(1):e56-e63. https://doi.org/10.1200/JOP.19.00256 https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JOP.19.00256
• Garrett, Sarah, Corey M. Abramson, Katharine Rendle and Daniel Dohan. 2018. “Approaches to Decision Making among Late-Stage Melanoma Patients: A Multifactorial Investigation.” Supportive Care in Cancer 27(3):1059-1070. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-018-4395-7 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30136025
• Abramson, Corey M. and Elena Portacolone. 2017. “What is New with Old?: What the Aging Population Teaches Us About American Inequality.” Sociology Compass 11(3):e12450. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12450 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/soc4.12450/abstract
• Dohan, Daniel, Meghan Halley, Sarah Garrett, Katharine Rendle, Katie Gilespie and Corey M. Abramson. 2016. “The Importance of Integrating Narrative into Health Care Decision Making.” Health Affairs 35(4):720-725. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2015.1373 https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2015.1373
• Abramson, Corey M. 2016. “Unequal Aging: Lessons from Inequality's End Game.” Public Policy and Aging Report (The Gerontologist) 26(2):68-72. https://doi.org/10.1093/ppar/prw006 https://academic.oup.com/ppar/article-abstract/26/2/68/2460961
• Abramson, Corey M., Martín Sánchez-Jankowski and Manata Hashemi. 2015. “Perceived Discrimination in U.S. Healthcare: Charting the Effects of Key Social Characteristics Within and Across Racial Groups.” Preventive Medicine Reports 2:615-621. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmedr.2015.07.006 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4721495/
• Abramson, Corey M. and Martín Sánchez-Jankowski. 2012. “Racial Differences in Patterns of Having and Using a Doctor Among the Elderly Poor in The United States.” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 30(2):203-217. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2011.11.001 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0276562411000692
• Abramson, Corey M. 2009. “Who Are the Clients?: Goal Displacement in an Adult Day Care Center for Elders with Dementia.” International Journal of Aging and Human Development 68(1):65-92. https://doi.org/10.2190/AG.68.1.d http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2190/AG.68.1.d

Theory (Culture and Action)

See also Abramson et al. 2024; Li, Dohan, and Abramson 2026; Abramson 2015; Abramson 2009.

• Abramson, Corey M. 2012. “From 'Either-Or' to 'When and How': A Context-Dependent Model of Culture in Action.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 42(2):155-180. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5914.2011.00484.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-5914.2011.00484.x
• Abramson, Corey M. and Darren Modzelewski. 2011. “Caged Morality: Moral Worlds, Subculture, and Stratification among Middle-Class Cage-Fighters.” Qualitative Sociology 34(1):143-175. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-010-9175-8 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11133-010-9175-8

Methods

AI and Machine Learning

• Abramson, Corey M. (lead author), Tara Prendergast, Zhuofan Li, and Daniel Dohan. 2026. “Qualitative Research in an Era of Artificial Intelligence: A Pragmatic Approach to Data Analysis, Workflow, and Computation.” Annual Review of Sociology 52(1):35-61. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-011824-104836
• Abramson, Corey M. 2026. “Uses of Computational Methods and AI in Qualitative Studies of Later Life.” Handbook of the Sociology of Aging, 2nd ed., edited by Markus H. Schafer, Dawn C. Carr, Jacqueline L. Angel, and Richard A. Settersten Jr.. (in press)
• Li, Zhuofan and Corey M. Abramson. 2025. “Ethnography and Machine Learning: Synergies and Applications.” Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Machine Learning. Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-the-sociology-of-machine-learning-9780197653609?cc=us&lang=en& https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.06087
• Farber, Orly N, Corey M. Abramson and Amanda Reich. 2025. “Utilizing Artificial Intelligence to Facilitate Qualitative Surgical Research.” Annals of Surgery Open 6(2):e577. https://doi.org/10.1097/AS9.0000000000000577 https://journals.lww.com/aosopen/fulltext/2025/06000/utilizing_artificial_intelligence_to_facilitate.14.aspx
• Li, Zhuofan, Daniel Dohan, and Corey Abramson (senior author). 2021. “Qualitative Coding in the Computational Era: A Hybrid Approach to Improve Reliability and Reduce Effort for Coding Ethnographic Interviews.” Socius 7. https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231211062345
• Abramson, Corey M., Jacqueline Joslyn, Sarah Garrett, Katharine Rendle, and Daniel Dohan. 2018. “The Promises of Computational Ethnography: Improving Transparency, Replicability, and Validity for Realist Approaches to Ethnographic Analysis.” Ethnography 19(2):254-284. https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138117725340

Comparative Ethnography and Logics of Inquiry

• Abramson, Corey M. 2021. “Ethnographic Methods for Research on Aging: Making use of a fundamental toolkit for understanding everyday life.” Handbook of Aging and the Social Sciences (9th edition). New York: Elsevier. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348905696_Ethnographic_methods_for_research_on_aging_making_use_of_a_fundamental_toolkit_for_understanding_everyday_life
• Gong, Neil and Corey M. Abramson. 2020. “A Comparative Analysis of Comparative Ethnographies.” Beyond the Case: The Logics and Practices of Comparative Ethnography. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. https://academic.oup.com/book/33599/chapter-abstract/288087455
• Cicourel, Aaron and Corey M. Abramson. 2020. “A Dialog on Comparative Ethnography with Aaron Cicourel.” Beyond the Case: The Logics and Practices of Comparative Ethnography. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. https://academic.oup.com/book/33599/chapter-abstract/288086979
• Abramson, Corey M. and Martín Sánchez-Jankowski. 2020. “Conducting Comparative Participant Observation: Behavioralist Procedures and Techniques.” Beyond the Case: The Logics and Practices of Comparative Ethnography. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. https://academic.oup.com/book/33599/chapter-abstract/288082583
• Garrett SB, Matthews T, Rendle KA, Abramson CM, Dohan D. 2020. “Developing a New Way to Display Data Collected from Interviews and Group Discussions.” Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). Includes updates and new materials from Abramson, Corey M., Daniel Dohan, Meghan Halley, Katie Gilespie, Sarah Garrett, and Katharine Rendle. 2015. "Guidelines for Conducting and Presenting Qualitative Research in PCOR." Report to the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute. https://www.pcori.org/document/developing-new-way-display-data-collected-interviews-and-group-discussions
• Fine, Gary Alan and Corey M. Abramson. 2020. “Ethnography in the Time of COVID-19: Vectors and the Vulnerable.” Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa 2:165-174. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340680966_Ethnography_in_the_Time_of_COVID-19_Vectors_and_the_Vulnerable
• Sánchez-Jankowski, Martín and Corey M. Abramson. 2020. “Foundations of the Behavioralist Approach to Comparative Participant Observation.” Beyond the Case: The Logics and Practices of Comparative Ethnography. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. https://academic.oup.com/book/33599/chapter-abstract/288082081
• Abramson, Corey M. and Neil Gong. 2020. “The Promise, Pitfalls, and Practicalities of Comparative Ethnography.” Beyond the Case: The Logics and Practices of Comparative Ethnography. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. https://academic.oup.com/book/33599/chapter-abstract/288081551
• Rendle, Katharine A, Corey M Abramson, Sarah B Garrett, Meghan C Halley, and Daniel Dohan. 2019. “Beyond Exploratory: A Tailored Framework for Designing and Assessing Qualitative Health Research.” BMJ Open 9(8):e030123. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2019-030123 https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/9/8/e030123
• Abramson, Corey M. and Daniel Dohan. 2015. “Beyond Text: Using Arrays to Represent and Analyze Ethnographic Data.” Sociological Methodology 45:272-319. 2015 Featured Article for Sociological Methodology, ASA Journal Highlights. https://doi.org/10.1177/0081175015578740 https://www.asanet.org/wp-content/uploads/attach/journals/sm2015feature.pdf

Blogs and Commentary

• Abramson, Corey M. 2024. “From Carbon Paper to Code: Crafting Sociology in an Age of AI.” Contexts: Guest Post. https://computationalethnography.org/writing/from-carbon-paper-to-code/
• Abramson, Corey M. 2023. “A Silicon Cage?: Qualitative Research in the Era of AI.” Medical Cultures Lab. https://www.cultureofmedicine.org/post/a-silicon-cage-qualitative-research-in-the-era-of-ai
• Abramson, Corey M. 2022. “History, Biography and Motivation in Pandemic Times.” Medical Cultures Lab. https://www.cultureofmedicine.org/post/history-biography-and-motivation-in-pandemic-times
• Fine, Gary Alan and Corey M. Abramson. 2020. “Ethnography in The Time of COVID-19.” ASA Footnotes. https://www.asanet.org/wp-content/uploads/attach/footnotes/footnotes_may-june_2020.pdf
• Abramson, Corey M. and Darren Modzelewski. 2017. “Sports Participation and the Reproduction of Ideology: Lessons from Mixed Martial Arts.” The American Middle Class: An Economic Encyclopedia of Progress and Poverty. ABC-CLIO 978-982. https://www.academia.edu/36850721/SPORTS_PARTICIPATION_AND_THE_REPRODUCTION_OF_IDEOLOGY_LESSONS_FROM_MIXED_MARTIAL_ARTS
• Dohan, Daniel and Corey M. Abramson. 2016. “Social Science Insights to Advance a Culture of Health.” Health Affairs Blog. http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2016/10/21/social-science-insights-to-advance-a-culture-of-health/
• Abramson, Corey M. 2015. “Unequal Until the End.” The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/04/unequal-until-the-end/389910/
• Abramson, Corey M. 2009. “Review of Forced Out: Older Workers Confront Job Loss.” Contemporary Sociology 38.

Public Methods Resources

• Abramson, Corey M. 2026. “Everything You Wanted to Know About AI (in social science).” GitHub. https://github.com/Computational-Ethnography-Lab/ai-wiki
• Abramson, Corey M. 2025. “Computational Analysis for Qualitative Data: Workflow and Visualization Resources.” GitHub. https://github.com/Computational-Ethnography-Lab/teaching
• Abramson, Corey M. 2022. “Qualitative Coding Simplified.” AI Horizons. https://aihorizons.io/qualitative-coding-simplified/
• Abramson, Corey M. 2022. “Sub-setting Qualitative Data for Machine Learning.” AI Horizons. https://aihorizons.io/sub-setting-qualitative-data-for-machine-learning-or-export/

Software and Code

• Abramson, Corey M. 2026. “CMAP QDPX Converter (Version 1.5.0).” GitHub. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21940242 https://github.com/Computational-Ethnography-Lab/cmap_qdpx_converter
• Abramson, Corey M. 2026. “Replication code (index).” GitHub. Including: Li, Dohan, and Abramson 2026; Abramson, Prendergast, Li, and Dohan 2026; Arteaga, Hernandez de Jesus, Ginn, Abramson, and Dohan 2025; Li, Dohan, and Abramson 2021. https://github.com/Computational-Ethnography-Lab/replication_code
• Abramson, Corey M. (with Yuhan Nian and other contributors). 2025. “CMAP Visualization Toolkit (Version 0.9.6).” GitHub. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17162829 https://github.com/Computational-Ethnography-Lab/cmap_visualization_toolkit https://colab.research.google.com/github/Computational-Ethnography-Lab/cmap_visualization_toolkit/blob/v0.9.6/visualization_toolkit_final.ipynb
• Li, Zhuofan and Corey M. Abramson. 2022. “An Introduction to Machine Learning for Qualitative Research.” Jupyter Notebooks (Python). For American Sociological Association Methodology Workshop. https://github.com/lizhuofan95/ASA2022_Workshop