SubData: Bridging Heterogeneous Datasets to Enable Theory-Driven Evaluation of Political and Demographic Perspectives in LLMs

Pietro Bernardelle, Leon Froehling, Stefano Civelli, Gianluca Demartini


Abstract
As increasingly capable large language models (LLMs) emerge, researchers have begun exploring their potential for subjective tasks. While recent work demonstrates that LLMs can be aligned with diverse human perspectives, evaluating this alignment on downstream tasks (e.g., hate speech detection) remains challenging due to the use of inconsistent datasets across studies. To address this issue, in this resource paper we propose a two-step framework: we (1) introduce SubData, an open-source Python library designed for standardizing heterogeneous datasets to evaluate LLMs perspective alignment; and (2) present a theory-driven approach leveraging this library to test how differently-aligned LLMs (e.g., aligned with different political viewpoints) classify content targeting specific demographics. SubData’s flexible mapping and taxonomy enable customization for diverse research needs, distinguishing it from existing resources. We illustrate its usage with an example application and invite contributions to extend our initial release into a multi-construct benchmark suite for evaluating LLMs perspective alignment on natural language processing tasks.
Anthology ID:
2026.nlperspectives-1.9
Volume:
Proceedings of the the fifth edition of NLPerspectives
Month:
May
Year:
2026
Address:
Palma, Mallorca (Spain)
Editors:
Shiran Dudy, Gavin Abercrombie, Valerio Basile, Elisa Leonardelli, Simona Frenda
Venues:
NLPerspectives | WS
SIG:
Publisher:
ELRA Language Resources Association (ELRA)
Note:
Pages:
84–97
Language:
External URL:
https://lrec.elra.info/lrec2026-ws-nlperspectives-09
DOI:
10.63317/2uppkbro3uvq
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Pietro Bernardelle, Leon Froehling, Stefano Civelli, and Gianluca Demartini. 2026. SubData: Bridging Heterogeneous Datasets to Enable Theory-Driven Evaluation of Political and Demographic Perspectives in LLMs. In Proceedings of the the fifth edition of NLPerspectives, pages 84–97, Palma, Mallorca (Spain). ELRA Language Resources Association (ELRA).
Cite (Informal):
SubData: Bridging Heterogeneous Datasets to Enable Theory-Driven Evaluation of Political and Demographic Perspectives in LLMs (Bernardelle et al., NLPerspectives 2026)
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